Tikal, Fores, Lanquin, and bus rides

I´m going to skip the ¨I know I haven´t written in forever, sorry I was busy¨speech, and get to the stories.

two weeks ago, Paul, Nichole and Karen left fo their respective homes, and Nikki and Rhianna and I went to Tikal. we caught a bus at 7:00 to guatemala city, and a large coach bus at 9:00 from the city to Flores. the bus was fairly comfortable, and I watched toy story in spanish, and tried to sleep. there´s a pretty sweet picture of the sunrise that I took from the bus. Flores is a very small island town connected to Santa Elena by a bridge. traveling at night is obviously not my thing, because I managed to leave both my hat and my water bottle on the bus, and not realize until much later in the day. in contrast to mountanous, high-altitude Antigua, Flores and lake Peten Itza are incredibly hot, in a heavy, wet, jungley sort of way. we arrived in Flores at about 5:00 in the morning, and had time to explore until our afternoon bus to Tikal. we found the cafe cool beans, (frijols frios) where they have hammocks, liquados, and a rooster. we had breakfast there (great waffles, with fruit, and syrup, and limonada) and then walked around town. it took avout 15 minutes to make a complete circut of the town.

on the west side of Flores, there´s this restaurant called ville de chef. it´s owned by these two german brothers, who had a canoe for rent. paddling out to the middle of a deep, crystal clear lake, and jumping off the canoe was one of the best parts of the trip. the water was cool enough to be refreshing, and so deep that it looked green. this school of fish lives under the restaurant´s dock.
after our stay Tikal, we came back for dinner here, and stayed at a hostel with a rooftop hammock setup. there was a huge electrical storm that night, which turned into the first tropical downpour of our trip. I guess we were in the rainforest, and should have expected it, but there was SO much water.

Tikal is a shuttle bus away from Flores, and on the way we passed signs similar to the deer crossing warnings, except that these signs warned of jaguars, turkeys, something that looked like a giant possum, and snakes. apparently they have snakes here large enough to endanger your car.

that night, we raced through the jungle paths of Tikal to get to pyramid 4, which has the best view of the sunset, and is on the opposite side of the park from the hotel. as the sun went down, I saw what must have been over two hundred dragonflys zooming around the top of the pyramid. what´s odd is they guide said there is no water near Tikal, so I have no idea where they came from.

the pyramids are, in a word, large. the steps of the one pyramid we actually climbed in the mayan way were just as painful as I had heard. however, looking out over the rainforest from the top of those stone temples, I could understand why the mayans thought they could talk to the Gods from here. you are on the tallest point in a sea of green. north, towards mexico, I could see a smudge of a cliff or mountain ridge, but in every other direction there is only forest. the mounds of uncovered pyramds and temples vastly outumber the 6 grey-white stone peaks I could see from temple 4. Tikal as only been partially unearthed, and it´s hard to imagine the city the guide described. The forest I could see from the tops of the pyramids has replaced an entire city of stone. perhaps excepting some gardens, Tikal was a stone island, with paved roads, stone and wood housing, painted temples and palaces, and the jungle surrounding it.

our sunrise tour started at 4:30, and we saw 75% of the ruins, and all of the major temples and pyramids before 9:00. of course, by nine, we were exhausted, and it was about 40º celcius, which is a lot in farenheight. I saw spider monkeys, toucans, parrots, what I think were weaver bird nests, and a close relative of the quetzal. the ants make little highways through the jungle, and we found leaf cutter ants that you could actually hear chewing leaves. I wanted to go look for those ants that move around in a pack and eat everything they find, including animals, but they don´t live around there.

after Tikal, we went to Lanquin, where there are some amazing caves. the hotel we stayed at was by a river that you could float down, and also had some very nice hammocks (I love hammocks, I´m going to bring one home with me).

I feel like I´m running out of descriptive power, so I´ll just say the caves were very interesting, with lots of bats and a few big-ass spiders. the parts we went into were lit artifcially though, which was a bit of a shame. the unfortunate part was that while we were only 9 Km from Semuc Champey (only the most beautful part of guatemala, so they say) we arrived after the park closed, and had already bought our bus ticket home the next day, to get back for school and volunteering.

so this weekend, I believe we´re going to the coast, where there is great surf, and I´m going to try my hand with a board, maybe hang ten, ride the green tunnel, and try not to eat to many waves. the weekend after, I want to goback to Semuc Champey, (only a 7 hour bus ride) and see the caves and rivers there. by then, I figure I´ll be broke, and I´ll come home.

as for this week, I have absolutely nothing to do. tomorrow I´m going to pastores to buy a leather jacket, and then I think I´ll rent a motorcycle for the day, and ride around Antigua. other than that, I finally got some music, and started playing the uke. I´m staying in a cubicle on top of this sketchy hotel, for about $3.50 a night, and having a good time.


-Sam