Three Weeks With My Brother (10 page)

We arrived at the Maya Biosphere—the vast national park in Petén that was home to the ruins—where we had lunch in an open-air hut along the lake. We continued to acquaint ourselves with our companions, most of whom had traveled far more extensively than either Micah or I. An hour later we were back on the road again for our stop at Yaxhá.

Yaxhá is both the name of a lagoon and the site of a city built more than 1,500 years ago amid the jungle along its banks. Yaxhá was once the third-largest city in the Mayan empire, and approximately twenty miles from Tikal, the largest and most important ceremonial city. When we arrived, however, we saw nothing but trees and dirt pathways winding among the hills. In the background, we could hear howler monkeys, but the foliage above us was so thick it was impossible to see them.

Our guide began talking about the city and Mayan culture while pointing in various directions. I could see nothing. As he continued, I glanced at Micah, who shrugged. When the guide asked if there were any questions, I spoke up.

“When do we actually get there?” I asked. “To Yaxhá, I mean?”

“We’re here, now,” he answered.

“But where are the buildings?” I asked.

He motioned to the hillsides surrounding us. “Everywhere you look,” he answered. “Those are not hills you see. Beneath each and every mound is a building or temple.”

The trees in this part of the jungle, we learned, shed leaves three times a year. Over time, as the leaves decay, they form compost, which eventually turns to dirt. The dirt allows for initial vegetation, then eventually trees. The trees grow, mature, die and new ones grow in their place. The jungle had swallowed the buildings, one by one.

This news didn’t surprise us. The city had been abandoned a thousand years ago—three thousand layers of densely packed leaves and growth—and the jungle had grown unchecked. It made sense that we would see no signs of the city.

But we were wrong. In fact, sections of Yaxhá had been completely restored less than
eighty years
earlier by archaeologists, in much the same way Tikal has been restored now. The jungle had been cut back, and dozens of buildings and temples had been completely excavated. Yet because the rains were beginning to slowly destroy the newly uncovered temples—and because lack of funds failed to keep the destruction in check—the government had no choice but to allow the jungle to encroach once more on Yaxhá, in favor of Tikal.

Micah began looking around, his expression as wondrous as that of a child.

“Can you believe that all this growth took place in only eighty years?” Micah asked me. “Our grandparents were living then.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“I wonder what it would look like after eight hundred years.”

“Probably about the same, don’t you think?” I speculated. “Except that the hills might be a little bigger.”

“I guess so.” He squinted, trying to peer through the density of the jungle. “How on earth could someone even have discovered this place? I mean, when I see a mound of dirt, I don’t automatically think there’s a pyramid beneath it.”

I put my arm around him. “That’s why you’re not an archaeologist,” I said.

Our guide began leading us along a path, continuing to describe various aspects of the city. Micah and I trailed behind our group, our heads swiveling from side to side. Micah suddenly rubbed his hands together; it was something he always did when excited.

“Nick,” he said, “can you believe we’re here? In a buried Mayan city in the jungles of Guatemala? Six hours ago, we were in Fort Lauderdale eating bagels and cream cheese!”

“It doesn’t seem real, does it?”

“No,” he said. “And I’ll tell you something.” He motioned around him. “I never believed I could get so excited about seeing a pile of dirt.”

A few minutes later, we entered what was once a plaza; before us was one of the only temples that had been fully excavated, and for the first time the reality of what we would see on the trip took hold. Shaped like a black and gray trapezoid, the temple towered a hundred feet in the air. Our guide informed us that it had been abandoned in roughly
A.D.
900, some six hundred years before Columbus arrived. It meant that the time between the usage of the temple and Columbus’s arrival, and Columbus’s arrival and the current day, were roughly the same, and the very thought amazed me. In the ebb and flow of history, the rise and fall of civilizations, my own daily concerns suddenly seemed minuscule in comparison.

My brother, too, was examining the temple before us with great interest, though his thoughts were slightly different from mine.

“Look how high it is! I’ve got to
climb
that thing!”

So, with our guide’s permission, we did. Running up the far side of the temple was a rickety set of rotting boards, spaced irregularly and laced together with frayed rope. My brother and I were the first to reach the top, and for the first few minutes we had the place to ourselves.

The sky was overcast with black clouds hovering at the distant horizon. Beyond us, we could see the lagoon and the utter density of the jungle spreading thirty miles in every direction. It was impossible to see through the canopy of trees, but we saw the tops of three or four pyramids poking through, as if trying to reach the heavens. And with the exception of the sound of our breathing—slightly labored from the climb—it was utterly, completely silent. The sides of the pyramid seemed to plunge straight down, and standing near the edge gave me a sense of vertigo. Yet neither Micah nor I could wipe the smiles off our faces. We had begun the trip of our lives a few hours earlier; now we were standing on what seemed to be the top of the world, in a place we’d always dreamed of seeing.

“Take my picture,” Micah suddenly said. “Christine’s going to love this.”

“If she were here, do you think she would have come up?”

“No way. She hates heights. She would have been one of those people way down there,” he said, pointing to where we’d been standing. “How about Cathy?”

“She doesn’t like heights either, but she’d be up here. She wouldn’t get too close to the edge, though.”

I took his picture and he took mine. We took another, then still more. And we continued to gaze in wonder, even as I retrieved the satellite phone from my backpack.

“I’ve got to call Cat,” I said, feeling the need to share this with her. I dialed the number and I heard the phone begin to ring. This amazed me. I was making a phone call from the middle of nowhere. When she answered, the first words out of my mouth were, “I’m standing on top of a Mayan temple in the jungle!” and I heard Cathy whoop with the same excitement I was feeling.

“Is it great?” she asked.

I stared around me in wonder. “It’s incredible,” I said. “The only way it could be any better was if you were here beside me.”

“Aw,” she said. “I miss you, too.”

Later, when I hung up, Micah asked for the phone to call Christine. Unfortunately, she was out, and, disappointed, he hung up after leaving a message on the answering machine.

A minute later, our moment of solitude ended with the arrival of the rest of the crowd.

That night at the hotel, there was a cocktail party followed by dinner. Dinner was a buffet, and despite the warnings about eating salads and vegetables, we saw many people eating them anyway. And just as the doctor predicted, more than a dozen would become ill within days; some would remain sick throughout the rest of the trip.

We dined that night with Bob and Kate Devlin, who split their time between Connecticut and New York City, and with whom we formed an immediate connection. They had two sons approximately our age and they said we reminded them of their kids. For us, the connection seemed just as personal.

“Doesn’t Kate remind you of mom?” Micah asked, as we were heading back to our room.

“Yeah, she does,” I answered, amazed that he’d been thinking exactly the same thing as I.

Lost in thought, we didn’t say much else the rest of the night.

Because it was the hub of Mayan life, Tikal has been declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO. Discovery, excavation, and repairs have been ongoing for decades, and despite the number of visitors, it takes a small army to keep the jungle at bay.

At one time, the area surrounding Tikal was home to a hundred thousand people, all of whom depended on the city for protection and trade. By the end of the tenth century, however, the civilization began to disintegrate. A number of theories abound as to the reason—overpopulation, wars, an overthrow of the ruling class, drought, famine, dwindling nutrient capacity of the soil, or simple discontent of the people that led them to find opportunities with other invading tribes. But within a few generations, the city had been completely abandoned and the people dispersed back into the countryside. The rise and sudden fall of the Maya is still considered one of the world’s great mysteries, and I was thinking about it as we made our way to the ancient city.

The ruins of Tikal include some three thousand structures, including palaces, temples, platforms, ball courts, plazas, and terraces, built over a period of six hundred years. Thus, some sections are significantly older than others, and it’s possible to observe the changing architecture of the Maya, which enables archaeologists to accurately date other Mayan sites throughout Central America and Mexico.

It was the sacrificial stones, however, that intrigued my brother. These were the stones upon which people had been killed as offerings to the gods. Our Maya guide was proudly discussing the historical and cultural reasons for the stones when Micah leaned over and whispered, “Have someone get a picture of me lying on the stone, while you pretend to stab me. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

Actually, I found the thought a little morbid, but I reluctantly agreed. I handed over the camera and we got ourselves into position. Just as the picture was about to be taken, the guide came rushing over, waving his arms to stop us.

“No, no!” he was shouting, his face reddening. “You can’t lie on the stones and take pictures! They have great religious significance!”

“I know,” Micah countered, “that’s why I want the picture.”

“It’s not allowed!”

“Just one picture.”

“No!”

“Aw,” he said, winking. “Just one. We won’t tell anyone.”

Though I laughed, the guide glowered. He was Maya, as were most Guatemalans who lived in the area, and I’m sure he thought we were insulting him or his culture. When he didn’t crack a smile, Micah reluctantly got up from the stone. As we began trailing after the group, I shook my head.

“Where do you come up with these ideas?” I asked in disbelief.

Micah laughed. “He didn’t like that much, did he?”

I shook my head. “He looked pretty mad, and so did the people running the tour. You’re insulting their culture. You’re going to get us in trouble.”

“Ah, they’ll get over it. They won’t even remember it.”

They did, of course. An hour later, one of the people who worked for TCS sidled up to us as we were walking. She was maybe a dozen years older than we were and had worked on numerous tours. She was well versed in the art of sizing people up quickly.

“You two are going to cause trouble on this trip, aren’t you?” she observed.

We walked along what was once the main boulevard entering Tikal, touring the ruins of a palace while howler monkeys screeched their warnings overhead. From there, we moved on to the main plaza.

Two pyramids lie at either end of Tikal’s main plaza. They are among the most photographed of all Mayan pyramids, and while one of the pyramids is off-limits to climbers, we were allowed to scale the second one.

At the top, the view was breathtaking. Micah finally reached Christine, and when he was finished with the call, we sat on the edge of the pyramid, our feet dangling beneath us. The ground was hundreds of feet below, and we could see other members of the tour, clustered in small groups throughout the ancient plaza. Since only a few wanted to make the climb, we had the place to ourselves.

“So how’s Christine?” I asked.

“She’s all right. Says she misses me.”

“How’s life on the home front so far?”

He smiled. “She’s going a little crazy. Unlike Cat, she isn’t used to me being gone. She kept talking about how busy she was—she hasn’t stopped since I went to the airport. She said it’s been four days of hell, and that she’s going to call Cathy for moral support.”

I smiled. “Tell her to call while the older kids are in school. Otherwise, Cat won’t have a chance to talk to her. Once all five are home, the house goes crazy. Especially between five and nine. We call those the witching hours. That’s when the little ones get tired, the older ones groan about having to do their homework, she starts cooking dinner—and still somehow manages to run the kids from one practice to the next. After that comes bath time, and if you’ve ever tried to get five kids tubbing and showering at once, you know it’s not exactly relaxing. She’s got such a good attitude about it. She’s a great wife, but she’s a genius as a mother.”

Micah put his arm around me. “We married well, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, we did,” I admitted. “I think that’s what we learned from mom. What to look for when we got married, I mean. We both married smart women with big hearts, who adore their children unequivocally. That’s what mom taught us.”

“Are you saying I essentially married my mother?”

“We both did.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “What did we learn from dad?”

“Anger management?” I cracked. “You know, the tongue thing?”

He laughed. “Yeah, that was something, wasn’t it? Man, he looked pretty scary when he did that. It still gives me nightmares.” He glanced at me. “Did I tell you I did that to Alli once? Just to see how she’d react?”

“And?”

“She ran away screaming and wouldn’t come out of her room.”

I laughed. “No, what I think we got from dad was our love of learning,” I said after a moment.

“I think so, too. Growing up, I thought mom was smart. Very smart. But dad . . . he was in his own league.”

“They were quite a pair, weren’t they?”

“Yeah,” he said. “And they balanced each other out. Who knows how we would have turned out had they not gotten back together after our stint in Grand Island?”