Onward to Tikal

We finally made it out of Guatemala City and headed north up to Coban. Chris told you all about the amazing pools at Semuc Champey on his blog.

He did not; however, tell you about my injury. I had managed to hike up the mountain to the overlook, even though I was up most of the night sick, wearing a skirt, and felt like passing out half the time. (I swear, I really was sick. It’s not just because I’m pathetically out of shape.) I also managed to walk along the slippery rocks without hurting myself. When it came to climbing slippery ladders through dark caves, I wisely passed, as Chris and I had not brought our first aid kit and (as you may know) I am a complete klutz. Our guide took us to a lovely spot on the river to wait for the people in our tour who did the cave thing. There, Chris enjoyed himself on the rope swing (see pic). I wisely passed on that also. Then I spotted a really cool looking bird. I walked over with my camera to take a picture and BAM, fell right on my ass, hard. I had gravel imprints on my butt for like two days. It hurt so bad, I wasn’t even embarrassed about falling on my ass and having to hold a cold bottle of coke to my nalga (that’s butt cheek in Spanish) for twenty minutes.

The next day Chris and I had a seven hour bus trip to Tikal. That’s seven hours on a chicken bus with a big, swollen nalga. Luckily, there were many sites along the way that distracted me from the throbbing pain in my ass. (No, I’m not talking about Chris.) I saw six houses in Guatemala’s version of a gated community. The unique part? There was a gate, but no walls attached to it. One of my favorites was a naked baby sitting in a tub by the side of the road, having the time of his life. not another person nearby. We also got to cross a gorgeous river on our amphibious chicken bus. Actually, we were on a rickety barge that managed, by some miracle, not to sink from our weight.

Finally, we reached Flores, a very cute little town on an island, in the middle of a lake, not far from the ruins of Tikal. Upon arrival, we were followed around by a very creepy cab driver who kept trying to tell us that if we didn’t make our Tikal reservations with him, we wouldn’t be able to go the next day. He also told us the hotel we were going to was going to be booked and that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. O.k., I made up that last part, but you get the picture. He was a big liar. Luckily, the woman at our hotel was fabulous. We had a nice meal, made our reservation for Tikal through her, and passed out (me trying not to sleep on my still-sore nalga).

The next day we hit Tikal, the reason for this several day journey. I’ll let Chris post the pictures of the ruins. Although they are impressive, the really cool thing about Tikal is the setting. It is in the middle of the jungle and the place is crawling with monkeys. Normally, monkeys don’t come anywhere near close enough to take halfway decent photos without a really good telephoto lens. Luckily, Chris and I found the Jim Carrey of monkeys. The minute he saw us, he dropped down a few feet and started showing off. He was still kind of high up and backlit, so the photos are a bit fuzzy, but here’s one of my favorites. In Guatemala, when something is cute, they say “que mono” - which also means, what a monkey.

After Tikal, we decided to skip twenty more hours on a bus and take a flight back to Guate. That way we could get back to Xela the same day and start packing for our journey home. More on that next post.