Day 5- Flores

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hola amigos! Greetings from deep in the jungle of Guatemala!!

On the plane ride there we met an interesting character--- a man who owns the biggest reptile farm in the world in el salvador (hes originally from the US). What are the chances of sitting beside someone like that??? Locals are not allowed onto his farm, CNN was there a few weeks ao ago and he ships to all the petsmarts in the world! He gave us him number and we are supposed to call him for a tour is we stop in el Salvador!

We arrived in the capital of guatemala last friday, our amigo was standing there at the airport exit with my name on a clipboard. He took us an hour east of guatemala to Antigua, which is a beautiful colonial town. Cobblestone streets, and cobblestone sidewalks, perfect for breaking your ankles. Outside of all banks, fancy tourist shops and even Burger Kings have a military men or policeman with a gun. Thats because i really want to steal a juicey burger from BK and the policemen is going to use his rifle on me! In a wierd surreal way you get used to the guns after awhile. Our hostel was really cool and we met tons of people in our first day! We did our own walking tour of antigua looked at some old churches and ruins. Antigua is very touristy and very beautiful, the food is amazing and really cheap. From antigua we took a bus at 4am (yes 4am) back to guatemala city where we changed onto a bus that would take us north to tikal! (ewok village in the star warsmovie) Here is the interesting part, this is the day me and laura got screwed up the ass because we are tourists. I use my spanish to clarify that we are getting a first class bus, the english speaking travel agent says "yes senorita, air conditioning, movies, music, lots of room etc etc" so we are thinking ok sweet, its a 8-10 hour bus ride travelling 500km and we wanted comfort. So at 5:30am we get to our bus and i walk on, and its a chicken bus. What is a chicken bus you say, well a shitty old bus for the locals that has no AC and no movies and no music. We sit there wondering what to do, meanwhile the bus isnt getting full, why you may ask- oh because the bus stops every few blocks with its door open yelling out our destination to locals who want to hop on. So we had a full bus eventually, we were the only white people on the bus and no one stared! i was so impressed. So we arrived at our destination in flores (a town an hour away from Tikal), the town is actually located on an island, its only about 200 meters wide and its essentially a tourist pit for Tikal Tours. So what do we do now'? we sign up for a tour to tikal and when does it leave you ask?? 3 AM!!!! So we had a few hours of sleep woke up at 2:30 and were picked up by a shuttle that took usto tikal. Now for those of you that dont know Tikal is a Mayan town that had a peak population of 100,000. Only 15% of the ruins have been uncovered the rest is under our feet or covered byjungles, there are something like 12000 buidlings that arent uncovered. We got there when it was pitch black and our guide is like "everyone bring out yourflashilghts" of course hardly anyonehad any because we were never told to bring any. So i end up stumbling over tree roots and stepping in mud potholes on this path we are walking on with no lights. It was a fast paced 30 minute hike that was slightly inclined that brought us deeper into the jungle. We then climbed ladders about 40 meters up in the complete darkenss, i had no idea where we were going. I get to the top and realize we were climbing to the top of a temple. We get up there and there are other people sitting on top of the temple in comple silence. The whole point of the early tour is to sit atop the temple listen to the jungle around you and watch the sunrise over the ruins of tikal. It was incredibly beautiful. We sat there for an hour in silence as we watched the sunrise, the birds begin to wake up and the howler monkeys do their thing. If you have everheard one of those, its frightening. We then continued our tour of tikal for thenext 4 hours. It was great. I will attempt to upload pictures in a few weeks. We are taking a day off in flores to relax, tommorow we leave to Coban and its going to be another long 6 hour bus ride, we will see how nice this bus is. There we are going to an orchid nursery and a rainforest that holds the famed quetzal birds.
So far this trip has been amazing, we have met so many people, and everyones opinions of guatemala are that its a beautiful country with beautiful people and it is completely true! No one asks for money here and i havent seen poor people wandering the streets (yet), we are in a jungle town and there are no bugs! Its only day 5 and if feels like its been weeks. i hope everyone is doing well. I like gettig emails so feel free 😊
please excuse the writing these keyboards are horrible and sticky

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