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Published: April 25th 2008
Hola!
What a crazy week it has been! On Thursday it was one of the other volunteers´ birthday so we had a big celebration where we made piñatas (and then smashed one later), had cake and they set off some fire crackers, a very common Guatemalan birthday tradition. That night we went out to Zona Viva (Zone 10) for supper which is known for it´s nightlife and it's a place where a lot of tourists go.
On Friday afternoon we went for a tour through one of the Cathedrals downtown and said good bye to three of our fellow volunteers who only stayed for only a week. At 9pm that night the remaining four of us took a bus to Flores and we arrived Saturday morning at about 5:45am. It was already about 25 degrees by the time we got there and we basically wandered around the little city looking for a hotel that was open. We found one and got settled and then we went for a tour around the lake. We stopped off at a small zoo (where there were pumas, warthogs, alligators and toucans!) and we climbed up to a spot that had a beautiful view
of Flores and all of the other cities around the lake. We went swimming for a while and then it started to downpour so we headed back to the hotel for the afternoon. That night we just went out for supper and went to bed early because we had to get up early the next morning.
On Sunday we went to Tikal! We took a bus out there at 7am and got there at about 8:30. We got a tour guide and hiked around the Mayan ruins for about 5 hours. It's basically a jungle, so we saw spider monkeys and lots of birds! On a lot of the ruins they have built stairs so that you can climb to the top and some of them were basically like climbing a ladder, it was so intense! There are so many different structures to look at and the amazing thing is that only about 10% of the ruins have been excavated. In many cases the archaeologists are still doing work on them! Also, one of the ruins was featured in the original Star Wars movie (Episode IV)! It was so amazing, the pictures that are on here don´t do it
justice.
We left Flores at 10am on Monday and got back at around 6:30! We haven't done too much this week, just had our spanish lessons and went for a bit of a tour around the city. It's been nice to just relax after the crazy week we had last week! Anyways I hope all is well!
Love,
Amanda
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Shauna
non-member comment
Wow!
Hey Amanda, thanks for the update! The pictures are great, I have always been interested in going to the Mayan ruins. Isn't it great to enjoy some hot weather for a while! It does our Canadian bodies good, I think! It is fall here and it's still plus 25 - 28 during the day. Ahhhh. I'm so happy to hear things are still going well!