A quay on Caye Caulker. This isn't just a fortunate angle on this shot - Caye Caulker is actually something close to paradise.
This is one of the main pyramids (there are 4 or 5) at Tikal. Tikal was primarily a religious center - most of the population lived in the surrounding jungle practicing slash and burn agriculture - and contrary to the new-agey beliefs about the supposedly peaceful Maya, the main component of their religion involved sacrifice - for the nobles this meant bloodletting on a regular basis. At the temples, this meant taking some poor bastard up to the platform of the pyramid, cutting their heart out, and then kicking the body so it rolled down the steep stairs at the front all the way to the bottom (unless you were especially brave or had been successful in the ball playing ceremony, in which case you might be lucky enough to have your corpse carried down.)
