And that's the end of my little diary entry that I wrote! Back to your regularly scheduled ad-hoc captions as I look through these photos and try to tell a story....The path through the woods eventually gave way into a beautiful clearing.
Five minutes after laughing about this, a hiker passed us coming the other way on the trail telling us that a bear had been spotted by other hikers nearby! We made it to the top of the trail unmolested by nature.
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.
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.
...and climbed up the hillside to check out the view! If you look to the right of the picture you can see the red roofs of the condo and the river mouth to the left.
While we waited for the horse to arrive at the hotel (he was being transported down to Manhattan from upstate via trailer), Klaus (the manager of the hotel at the time) took us up to the roof so we could see the totally surreal view from the glass-edged roof deck. Breathtaking!
Vancouver is surreally beautiful. The whole time I was walking around, I felt like I'd been transported to some magical city fifty years in the future.
On the right you can see the mountainous other half of the island we were on (Koh Phi Don). In the background you can see Koh Phi Ley, the smaller uninhabited island where Maya Bay (made famous in the movie The Beach) is.
And here's the view from the top! See how thin the strip of land that separates the ocean? (This is the reason the death toll on this island was so high when the tsunami hit - all of the high rise fancy resorts that used to be on Phi Phi where built on this tiny strip of land that's only like 200 yards wide. When the tsunami came through, it pretty much bowled right over these buildings without anything else getting in the way.)
After we'd finished hysterically laughing and we'd caught our breath, we decided to hike up to the highest point on the island to watch the sunset. Here's a view of one of the beach areas from about halfway up the really long steep path to the island's scenic overlook.
After stopping back out our hostel and lazing around a bit, we wandered down the road a bit and ended up eating lunch at another hostel down the road that had a tiny little restaurant on a huge, sprawling porch that looked out onto the mountains.
...we rounded a corner and our driver pulled over to the side of a the road so that we could check out one of the most breathtaking scenic overlooks I've ever seen!
So gorgeous. (And if you look in the foreground of the pic you can see the road that leads down the mountain and the first of many hair-pin turns that you to navigate).
And here's the northwest view from the top of Coit Tower. (Yo, as much as I kid around about having trouble adjusting to San Francisco, it really is hands down one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Everywhere you go, you look around and there's a view that makes you go "Whoa." If only they could get improve the public transportation and figure out a way to import tons of slutty girls...)
This is one of the pictures that Meredith STOLE FROM ME and used in her recap of the visit. She pretty much summed it up best when she said "The ledge was covered in coins that people had slid through the window, in an apparent attempt to harm anonymous passers-by. That, at least, was one sentiment we (as New Yorkers) could relate to." Hahah.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)