While based in the town of Flores on beautiful Lake Peten-Itza, we found opportunities to interact with modern Maya, always an important component of our trips. We visited the lakeside town of San Jose and talked with one of the six remaining speakers of Itza Maya. (Itza Maya Dictionary) 

 
Flores, Guatemala, is on a tiny island inLake Peten-Itza, and was once the
Post-Classic Maya capital of Tayasal  

Besides spending several days exploring the enormous site of Tikal, one of the largest and most influential of all Maya kingdoms, we went to Uaxactun, one of Tikal's powerful rivals to the north, now a remote chiclero village.

We traveled by boat on the Pasion River to Seibal far to the south, and measured the dimensions of its famous observatory. Each afternoon, Dr. Ed Barnhart instructed us in Mayan hieroglyphics, architecture, astronomy, or dynastic chronologies.

This area of Guatemala is the center of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, the largest continuous tropical rain forest in Central America (22,280 square miles). We saw spider and howler monkeys up in the trees, groups of coatis and agoutis on the forest floor, and crocodiles, grey fox, green parrots, and many other birds. We took a "zip line" ride through the canopy of giant ceiba, palm, mahogany, and chicle trees.

On our last day, we hiked in the dark through the silent ruins and climbed to the top if Tikal's tallest Temple IV and watched the dawn as howler monkeys chorused far below us.