A trek to El Mirador - the first great city if the Mayans

by E Attenborough

You might think trekking 100 miles through thick Guatemalan jungle to see the first great city of the Mayans is tough, but try doing it with your mother.

It was the conversation with the night manager at the Hotel Peten in Flares which belatedly made me nervous. “Where are you going,” he asked.

“El Mirador,” I replied.

A furrow set across his brow. “Who are you going with?”

“Mayan lands.”

The furrow became a trench. “No as una compania muy responsable...” ‘Whats he saying, what’s he saying,” demanded my mother, whose Spanish is thankfully even less accomplished than my own.

“Er, he says he’s sure we’ll have a lovely time.”

The night manager started shaking his head. “Well I hope everything is Ok,” he said, in the manner of man who fully expects never to see his audience again.

Forty minutes later there was still no sign of the driver who was due to take us to Carmelito, the basic peasant village where the road towards the last capital of the Mayan world ends and the narrow jungle path, navigable only by foot or on horseback begins.

Almost an hour later than billed, a minibus pulled up. We piled in, me, my mother, my old university friend Helen, Martha, a Canadian engineering graduate, and Antje, who was

taking a long holiday in Guatemala. None of us it seemed had the energy to kick up a fuss

when we then proceeded to do a tour of the travel agents friends and relations in town, picking up water and the hammocks and mosquito nets which were to be our homes for the next four nights.

The whole idea had started as a joke. While my mother and I were planning our trip to Guatemala, I had suggested doing the five -day trek to see El Mirador, a huge site deep in virgin rainforest in the country’s largest and least populated state, the Peten.

The guidebook described the journey to the virtually untouched ruins as “a considerable undertaking - for experienced trekkers only”.

Barely had we arrived in the Peten capital Flores, than we had started asking probing questions about the El Mirador expedition. If this was a joke, it was fast getting out of

hand.

Flores is the easiest place to arrange a trip to El Mirador, An attractive colonial town, beautifully situated on an island in lake Peten ltza and connected to the mainland by a

750m long causeway, Flores is also the base for trips to El Mirador’s infinitely better-known, better-excavated, and better-connected archeological descendant, Tikal - a well-established ‘must’ for any traveler to Guatemala with the faintest interest in ancient civilization. Click here to go to page 2

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