The entire time my mind was trying to soak in the details and atmosphere of the place and comprehend the minds of the people who designed and built it, it kept getting interrupted with a voice saying "this is JUST LIKE being in an Indiana Jones movie!"
From the Wikipedia summary: "Baudrillard defined "hyperreality" as 'the generation by models of a real without origin or reality' it is a representation, a sign, without an original referent. Baudrillard believes hyperreality goes further than confusing or blending the 'real' with the symbol which represents it; it involves creating a symbol or set of signifiers which actually represent something that does not actually exist, like Santa Claus. Baudrillard in particular suggests that the world we live in has been replaced by a copy world, where we seek simulated stimuli and nothing more."
Hung out on top and enjoyed the view for a while. The stairs are incredibly steep. I'm sitting on the stairs just a few steps up from these guys. Look how far away they are!
They haven't really cleared away any of the dense jungle from the perimeter of the structure. The temple's stairs are overgrown and crumbling away so you climb the pyramid via a makeshift set of scaffold-stairs they've built alongside the structure.
...we hiked our way through the jungle again for a bit to Tikal's Temple IV. Built in 741 AD and standing 212 feet tall, "Temple IV is the tallest pre-Columbian structure still standing in the New World."
After telling us about the site, our guide let us loose to explore. So mind-boggling to walk around and try to picture what the place might've been like in the hey-day.
See those other big "hills" on the left-side of the horizon? Those are probably other Mayan pyramids buried under dirt and jungle that are waiting to be discovered and excavated!
View of the courtyard! More unbelievable than the fact that you can actually climb up to the top of these monuments is the fact that there aren't any safety railings or roped-off areas to prevent you from falling off the edge and plummeting to your death. Even getting this close to the edge to peek over and take this picture made the people up there with me nervous and made my palms start to sweat. Haha.
