Its funny what you can find on an old harddrive. Heck half of what will be posted here is just that.

The .doc file is dated 9/22/1994, and that sounds about right. Likely I wrote the story and the analysis of it for a English class assignment that was to detail a true experience. I did go to Guatemala, and visited Tikal. But how true the rest of it is up to you to decide.
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The Temple of the Jaguar

The generator shut off.

Darkness.

I folded up the map and grabbed my backpack. I tried my pathetic flashlight. Pathetic. I started up the trail towards the ancient ruins of Tikal.

Tikal is considered the greatest archaeological site of the Mayans. Located in North-Eastern Guatemala it’s not at all easy to get to. I had arrived just several hours before, but had yet to see the ruins. A long sleepless van ride through potholes the size of boulders and shallow creekbeds had seen to that. On arrival I slept for a few hours, until the generator had started and woken me.

Heading towards the ruins I saw a full moon rising. On the jungle trail the canopy of trees blocked out the sky. The jungle closed in around me. My inept flashlight decided to burn out. Discouraged I stumbled on. The trees thinned for a moment and by the moonlight I saw mosquitoes all over me. Slapping them, blood appeared; from the wounds or the bugs I was unsure, my blood all the same. Walking up an incline I slipped in the mud, and fell on my ass. I cried out a short but violent list of profanities. A parrot squawked in the jungle in response. Getting up took awhile, the mud was omnipresent. I thought of the shower back at the hotel, the inviting bed....
“No!” I thought “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, besides, what else could happen to me?”.
The Mayans had constructed their city around the great temples at their center the greatest of which was the Temple of The Jaguar. I walked along the trail. I then entered a clearing. It contained several small pyramids. I climbed one to get a view of the clearing. It was bright. The full moon was in the sky, and the stars were as true and numerous as I had ever seen.
I opened my bag and looked again at the map of the ruins. I found where I was on the map and looked for the path from this clearing that would take me to The Temple of the Jaguar. From my vantage point atop the small pyramid I could see the new path was no less dark than the trail I had entered by.

I tried the flashlight again the batteries were fresh it must have been the bulb. Turning back and waiting till morning was the only ‘reasonable’ thing to do - after all my destination was still a couple of Kilometers away and I had no light to guide my path. I scratched my arms and legs. The bites had swelled to three times normal mosquito-bite size and were still bleeding. By the pale moonlight I saw I was covered in my own blood. My hands had wiped it on my face, my map, my clothes. As I put the map away I spied my miniature portable TV in my backpack; it was the size of a Walkman. I had just seen the Canadian federal election results on it a month ago in San Francisco. I turned it on, not for any desire to watch TV, but because it was a good light source. The static filled the screen and a hiss came from its tiny speaker but it cast a good light. Enough to see a trail by? I turned the volume down to its lowest setting, to save power. I headed for the path.
As I walked with the light of my little TV guiding my way I repeatedly spotted images that called to mind some of the scarier things I had heard about Tikal. In the shadows just out of sight I saw socialist rebels with smoking Kalashnikovs, Mayan priests with upraised daggers and jaguars on the prowl all of which turned into bushes or trees or Mayan monoliths. I passed nearby great temples, massive stone apartments, and great mounds that could be nothing but unexcavated pyramids.
Then it came upon me all at once. That particular pyramid I was looking for. I was at the base of The Temple of the Jaguar. This pyramid was at its base unexcavted, and shrouded in trees and vines. A crudely constructed path wound its way up the steep slope.
I had made it. I looked up. Stars through the canopy of trees above shone in invitation. I started to climb. The trail up the side was harsh, it had sometimes rough hewn stairs or just a rope but I climbed on. I was above the trees my arms aching, my heart pounding. Mosquitoes all over me, in my eyes and on my neck. I cared not.
I could see the tops of other temple-pyramids like islands in a sea of green. The trail ended and above me where the ancient stone steps of the pyramid, badly worn away as if a million people had trodden over them for a thousand years.
I turned off the TV. The steps were slippery with blood. Blood? Blood on my hands that touched the cold stone as I climbed up on all fours. I thought of the blood sacrifices that were performed here and the significance of how these stones were blooded again after hundreds of years.
Finally I reached the top of the steps. Directly ahead of me was a doorway. I went in the middle door. This chamber was filled with.... with.... graffiti.
”Well this sucks.” I said. And it did. Disgusted I returned to the view.
Walking around the perimeter of the pyramid's top, seeing a ladder went up to the pinnacle several meters above. I climbed it. At the top I rounded a corner to face the temple front. The full moon was directly overhead. I soaked it all in. It was a ferocious serenity. Turning to explore the uppermost chamber, I turned on the TV.
A face! I saw a face inside by the ghostly light of my miniature TV, I saw a man’s face. It was neither a socialist rebel, nor a Mayan Priest. It was a guy from Germany. We talked till Dawn.

Analysis of The temple of the Jaguar:
A Battle Hard Fought is a Victory Sweet

In the writing of the first half of this essay I found that I had come to a new insight about my experience. Before writing it out, I was saddened when after all my work I learned I was not alone. It deflated my ego. After reliving the experience over again I have come to the conclusion that the difficulty in getting there was the best part. Anticipation of what was ahead for me was exciting. The ruins themselves were even greater than I had imagined, but still I know that if I had flown to Flores, then traveled by chartered bus, and visited only during the day as so many others have I, would not have enjoyed it a tenth as much as I did.
The German guy’s name was Peter. He and I did indeed talk all night and although his English was poor and my German worse, we learned a lot about each other. I found that we were similar people although he was in his 30’s. We discussed how he had gotten there (by bus from Costa Rica via Nicaragua). We talked about the ruins and how he had climbed the same steps just 20 minutes before I had. In the night we walked amongst the restored ruins and talked about what life must have been like for the people who lived there so long ago. When dawn was approaching we climbed The Temple of the Jaguar again, where we watched the sunrise. We walked back towards the hotel area and were seen by the first few morning visitors on the trail. These people asked “Are you guys okay?”. It was then I noticed what Peter looked like, he looked just like I did covered in mosquito bites and caked in mud.
Climbing the Temple-pyramid I felt as Sisyphus must have; doomed to push a rock up a hill and never getting it over with. It was in fact not a test of stamina, but a test of will. I made that trip by myself. Alone from Vancouver to Tikal by bus, plane, car and van to see some ruins. Others, most others at the site, had flown in to the nearby airport in Flores and taken a chartered bus to Tikal. When I sought out to do it I thought it was a road less traveled. I felt that maybe I was not as strong as I thought not being alone on top of that pyramid. That is the perspective I had before writing about it. The perspective I have now is different. There were a lot of other people at the few hotels and campgrounds near Tikal. They knew what I knew but only we two (Jesse and Peter) had made the effort. The magnificence of the view was compounded by the difficulty in reaching it. At every turn I was told 'Turn back!' 'Go no further!'. Not just by the physical challenges in my way but also in the mental hurdles I had to overcome. I thought “You can see it tomorrow Jesse, no problem”. Later on I discovered that the view I had seen atop the Temple of the Jaguar was not completely unfamiliar to me. It was in Star Wars set as an alien planet. The effect that view had on me was more profound than any others in my recent memories, yet it flashes by in a movie as a drop of water in an emotional ocean in comparison to seeing it after the odyssey it took to get there. I‘ve discoved that a battle hard fought is victory Sweet.