Country Number Three

So we have made it to Guatemala. We arrived Friday in the late afternoon and are sweltering in the Guatemalan heat. The weather was hot in the Western side of Belize, but the temperature has definitely just kept going up as we moved into Guatemala. I am in a state of constant sweating!

We are in a little island called Flores, which is located in Lago de Peten Itza. We came here to serve as a base for going to Tikal, but this is a nice little island. It´s basically just a hill, with crazy cobblestone streets throughout the town (which seem to be the most difficult cobblestone I´ve ever tried to walk on!), and maybe there is about 2 trees. At the top of the hill there is a nice open stone plaza where there is a basketball/soccer court, and it seems to be the only open area on the island...And that´s where the 2 trees are. But it is so hot here that we have just been spending a lot of time in the water. There is not much of a beach, but there is just one section with steps down from the road onto a little pebble beach and everyone swims there. It´s a very chill place here with not much to do but swim...It´s cool.

We got here Friday evening and arranged a sunrise tour of Tikal for yesterday morning (Saturday). The idea of a sunrise tour seemed like a good plan, but we had to leave at 3:15 in the morning!!! So painful....The ride is a little over an hour to Tikal, but with the tour they let you in before the park even opens. You hike in the dark to one of the temples, climb up there, and wait for the sun to come up. It turned out to be a great way to see Tikal...First of all, getting there so early allows you to miss alot of the crowd factor, and you miss the midday heat. When we left at 11 it was really sizzling out there so we were so glad we were done!

Tikal was amazing!! Such a huge Mayan city...When we climbed the first temple, many days there is a fog that prevents you from seeing the view of the other temples peaking above the forest, but we had a clear view. We sat in silence watching the forest and hearing the birds and monkeys waking up, all while taking in the amazing view of the jungle and the temples in the distance. It was pretty nice...The rest of the time we spent walking around to the other temples and hearing about the history of each. We got to climb almost all the temples, so that was also an added bonus. Some were very steep and it was a little scary to climb them, and by the end of the morning our legs were shot from hitting all those stairs!! We also saw a bunch of toucans, toucanettes, howler monkeys, and a few other exotic birds during our walk around Tikal.

We got back to Flores and immediately went to the lake to cool off...As we were walking there, Adrian and I were talking about emailing Tracy and Nick, a cool couple from England we had met in San Ignacio a few days ago. They just started traveling for 6 months, and are going the same way we are so we exchanged emails and decided we would try to catch up with them. I was saying to Adrian,¨ok, I will email them after we swim and see where they are.¨ Low and behold, as we walk up to the beach, there they are swimming around...Cool. So we met up later for happy hour, and hung out all night having some beers and chatting...At about 11:30 we left the hostel and tried to find another bar. We ended up at an outside bar just grabbing a beer when one of the local guys from the table next to us busted out his guitar and started singing. That began a round of the four of us trying to join in on his songs, making requests, and enjoying the music. He was even playing some Spanish song that I actually knew! It was a great little music session with us singing Spanish songs and the guy trying to play any English songs he knew...Good times! We sauntered home around 1am, realizing we had been awake for almost 24 hrs...I was exhausted...