Three Weeks With My Brother by Nicholas Sparks, Micah Sparks Page A

Christmas.”
    My parents had reconciled (though at the time we weren’t even aware that they’d officially separated) and my dad had taken a job as a professor at California State University at Sacramento, where he would teach classes in management.
    Our time in Nebraska came to an end as abruptly as it had begun.

C HAPTER 6

    Yaxhá and Tikal, Guatemala
    January 24–25
    O n Friday morning, Micah and I touched down in Guatemala and stepped into a world completely different from the one we had just left.
    After passing through customs, the tour group boarded vans and drove toward Petén, passing ramshackle houses and small villages that seemed to have been assembled with random bits and pieces of material. In some ways, it was like stepping back in time, and I tried to imagine what the Spanish conquistadores first thought when they arrived in this area. They were the first to discover the ruins of what was once a flourishing civilization, whose large cities included temples rising as high as 230 feet and silhouetted against the dense jungle foliage.
    I’d been interested in the Maya since I first read about them as a child, and knew they’d attained intellectual heights unrivaled in the New World. In their Golden Age, from A.D. 300 to 900, their civilization encompassed the area including the Yucatán Peninsula, southern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, parts of Honduras and El Salvador. The culture reached its height amid the jungles and swamps of Petén, Guatemala, where they built the cities of Yaxhá and Tikal.
    The civilization was a study in contrasts; a sometimes brutal culture that engaged in human sacrifice, the Maya were simultaneously employing the concept of zero a thousand years before the Europeans, and were able to calculate into the hundreds of millions. Their knowledge of mathematics allowed them to chart the stars, accurately predict lunar eclipses, and develop a 365-day calendar, yet legend has it that they never used the wheel.
    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