Guatemala...El Mirador

El Mirador means 'the lookout' or the 'the view point'. Having never read anything about this ancient Mayan city I wasn't too sure exactly what to expect. Many people visit Tikal each year as it's very easy to reach but Mirador is more of a challenge. Hidden deep in the jungle, close to the border with Mexico, Mirador is a four day hike and can only be accomplished with qualified guides.  But of course we didn't have four spare days to hike into the site. We're on a very tight filming schedule of just 18 days in total (we would normally take a month) but having friends in the right places makes things much easier.  Renee's father, Francois Berger has offered to fly us to the site in his Bell helicopter and we're not going to pass up that opportunity!

Getting essential gear and five people into the chopper
is going to push it to it's take off weight.

Francois inspecting the 'blue beast'

Francois is certainly a great pilot. He's been flying both
planes and helicopters since his teens.

By air, it's a much shorter 30 minute flight across the most incredible expanse of non-stop jungle I've ever seen. It's truly inspiring to see that there are still such large swathes of jungle still out there. The Maya Biosphere Reserve covers an area of over 21600 square kms (although, like many such places in the world, they also have problems with illegal logging and land clearance for agriculture).

The reason for our visit to Mirador is to view the incredible Maya ruins that were first discovered back in 1926. But they were not surveyed in any detail until 1978 because of the difficulty in reaching the site. The biggest pyramid out of the hundreds of structures present is La Danta (The Temple). It stands over 260 ft above the forest floor and is in remarkable condition considering it was once covered in jungle - and still has a number of trees growing out of it! You can't get any scale from the photo below but it's huge with a volume of 2800,000 cubic meters.

La Danta

An island in a sea of trees...La Danta

...and the view from the top is staggering. Jungle as far as the eye can see.

I had to pinch myself. I couldn't believe I was here!

Myself, Francois and cameraman Mike Hutchinson
on top of La Danta.

Nigel looking at some of the recently uncovered stucco friezes
in this enormous archaeological site.

Wandering around among the ancient ruins were brightly coloured Ocellated Turkeys. These are very pretty birds and a species I'd been hoping to see, a Yucatan speciality.

Ocellated Turkey - look at those colours!

Ocellated Turkey

Ocellated Turkey

Collared Aracari

We pulled out of Mirador as late as we could leave it. We had to make the flight back in daylight so left around 5 pm. Back Las Guacamayas, Andres and Rowland had been off herping for the day to try and find us some reptiles to film...rather them than me. They had encountered some of the worst mosquitoes either of them could remember and Andres had come off worse for it.

Rowland Griffin (left) and Andres Novales
with a male Green Iguana

Hmmm...that looks bloody itchy!

Unfortunately they hadn't had any success for their suffering, however a fishing trip to catch our evening meal had resulted in one of the finds of the whole trip and in the morning we'd get a look at it.