Take A Trip through Time in Tikal, Guatemala
The combination of ancient ruins and lazy days on beaches provided the perfect trip back in time for us over New Year’s in 2007.
The combination of ancient ruins and lazy days on beaches provided the perfect trip back in time for us over New Year’s in 2007.
Tikal is one of the major sites of Mayan civilization, inhabited from the 6th century B.C. to the 10th century A.D. We spent three days viewing this and other ruins in the vicinity.
This was no ordinary vacation; instead our Cosmos (around the world) journey with our kids was a lifestyle change that lasted over four months, from September 2003 to January 2004.
We spent three days in New York CIty seeing the major attractions, including Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Staten Island Ferry, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Times Square and the Empire State Building.
One of the big splurges on our trip was a transatlantic cruise on the Queen Elizabeth II. The ship made its last regularly scheduled crossings across the Atlantic Ocean in 2003, which made the cruise even more special.
We landed in Southampton and took a short train trip to London. We spent four days there and visited Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, the Cabinet War Rooms, Imperial War Museum, British Museum and the town of Greenwich.
We reached Windhoek, Namibia, the capital city, via a 21 hour bus ride from Cape Town. Our major activity in Namibia was a four day visit to Etosha National Park, in the northern part of the country.
We were driven about 800 kilometers through the Kalahari Desert to a place called Audi Camp, just outside of the Okavango Delta and Chobe National Park.
We left Windhoek at 7:30am and arrived in Maun at about 3pm. As we approached Maun (about 50km away), we passed a village called Toteng. We didn’t see any cars, bikes or stores. In fact, the only reason I noticed it was that the speed limit was reduced from 120km to 80km.
To get to Zambia, we crossed the Zambezi River by public ferry and walked across the border.