In the Jungle, the mighty jungle.

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So settled in Flores now, after just two nights. Very chilled atmosphere, and crawling with travellers! Yesterday was spent in the lake, we went down the jetty to have a refreshing swim, but the water was so warm it wasn´t too refreshing, but nice all the same! The lake is so deep and so diving off the jetty was good fun, and amazing scenery around, a mangrover island, palm trees everywhere and regaton music booming out from the bar. However, we are no longer the palest travellers in Guatemala, more the reddest..the sun is fierce here, and no serious burning that ruined today, but we´ve learnt our lesson! At about 6, Will and I decided to have a cheeky beer before going to look for some dinner, and got chatting to a really nice Chilean Norweigan (!), who was travelling with his girlfriend who was Norweigan. They came and sat with us and told us all their stories of the past 6 months, they started in Chile and have worked up South America and Central America and will end up in New York! The Galapagos Islands sounded (expensive but) absolutely amazing! By this time it was about half 8, and any thoughts of dinner had been forgotten, and we were joined by an Irish guy with his French girlfriend who i had met earlier that day. They´d met in Australia and had been travelling together since for the last year or so. At about quarter to 11 and many more 2 for $1.50 beers (the happy hours here are more like happy 6 hours!!) we thought we´d best get to bed, as me and will were off to Tikal at 4am, and the NOrweigans were off to Caye Caulker, Belize at 5am, where we are going tomorrow.

It was not nice waking up this morning, and we all got into a shuttle bus to take us to Tikal Ruins. There were about 25 of us, Brits, French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Australian.

We were met by our tour guide Cesar, a brilliant Guatemalan guy whose English vocabulary is fantastic and has picked up a lot of American phrases (his favourite being "Shiiiit maaan!") We trekked through the jungle for about 5 hours coming across spider and howler monkeys, raccoons, toucans, and all sorts of bugs! And then the ruins appeared....oh my god! They were absolutely huge Mayan sacrificial towers surrounded by dense jungle, and knackering to climb up! You could see for miles and see the size of Tikal with many similar temples peeking out over the tree tops. The temperature was unreal, with everyone dripping from the humidity and the sunlight. A fantastic experience, one thing that should not be missed on a trip to Guatemala, and the spider monkeys showing off above us jumping around a swinging as we walked off was a highlight!

Just sitting in Hostel Los Amigos, down the road from our hostel having had a great burger and chips to sort out our delicate stomachs and gonna go for a swim in a bit.

5am bus to Belize tomorrow...errr!

Adios for now.

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