Tikal Trip.

If you read my last blog then you remember that I talked about going on a couple of trips this week. I got home last night from my trip to Tikal and are leaving in the morning for the trip to Rio Dulce. Here is a recap of the last few days.

The group that I traveled to Tikal with arrived in Pana Thursday night. On Friday we went up to Camanchaj, so they could check out the clinic and school. The kids at the school were putting on a performance for their parents for Guatemala's Independence Day. It is on September 15th, but apparently it is a month long celebration. It was the perfect day for the group to experience the school kids. Each class put on a performance for the group. They were beyond precious and reminded me of how lucky I am to get to play with them every week.

We hung out in Pana until we left on Sunday for Tikal. On Friday after they visited Salud y Paz Carol Ann, Scott, and I took 2 chicken buses back to Pana for lunch. We then took 2 pick up trucks over to both Santa Catarina and San Antonio Polopo for the afternoon. That was one of my favorite moments of the trip. It was pouring down rain when we were on the pick up trucks over to the other villages. When we arrived in San Antonio an indigenous lady came up to us and told us that at her house they sold the pottery that the village is known for for cheaper than at the factory. We ended up following her to her house and Scott and Carol Ann actually got pretty good deals on their buys. When we got back to the center of town where we were going to catch a pick up back to the next village Carol Ann looked in her backpack and found that the bananas that we had bought back in Pana had crushed everywhere. While in Pana we went to the store and found bananas that had 2 bananas in one peel. We had never seen them before, so we decided to buy them. Then when we were in the pick up truck it was so crowded that Scott had to hang off the back, I had to sit on the tailgate, and Carol sat on the floor on top of her backpack with the bananas. They had crushed everywhere all over everything in her bag. This story is only hilarious (however, it may be an you had to be there story) because when we were cleaning her bag which meant she was cleaning and yelling at me that it wasn't funny because I was laying on the floor laughing the 2 indigenous women who were trying to sell us things were also laughing at us while explaining to us that if we ate the double bananas we would have twins. Then one of the ladies kept tickling me and thought it was hilarious that we were all laughing so hard. Again maybe this was a you had to be there story, but I wanted to remember that moment of just pure laughter and again a reminder that laughter is the same in any language.

On Sunday we took a shuttle to Guatemala City then an overnight bus to Flores. The bus could have been way worst, but it wasn't the best. It was freezing cold and I always have issues sleeping on buses. Scott and I were sharing a seat and I actually ended up moving to the floor to sleep which gave him the seat to lay down on. We kept waking up at the same time and would just complain about how we couldn't sleep then try to fall back asleep. When we arrived in Flores our hotel picked us up and after waiting at the airport for awhile for another dude we traveled into the Tikal Park. Our hotel was one of only 2 that are in the park. Tikal is one of the largest and most popular Mayan archaeological site in the world. It is the place where everyone I have met down here has told me I have to go to. When we got to the hotel we went on the archaeological tour which toured around about half the park. Here we are on top of the first temple that we climbed up.

Next up we hiked up to Temple 4 which is the tallest one in Tikal. The second day we were there we did the sunrise tour which left from the hotel at 3:45 in the morning. We hiked to this same temple again and climbed it in the dark. Then we sat there listening to the animals of the jungle and eventually watching the sunrise. Listening to the animals was my favorite part. The guide kept saying the loud sounds I was hearing were monkeys waking up, but I promise it was a hippo and dinosaur fighting. We also could hear the different birds. Such a cool moment. The next couple of pictures are from when we hiked Temple 4 during the day.

On the way down from the Temple we stopped to take a picture. This is Carol Ann. She used to live in Guatemala and is now serving at the same organization as Scott in Costa Rica. Simply put she is amazing. She is thinking about moving back to Guatemala and if she does I know we will be great friends. She even offered for me to come and stay with her in Costa Rica next month. Both her and Scott are moving back to the States in November, so if I want to go visit them I will have to do it next month. I am seriously thinking about it because if I stay with them it will obviously be cheaper than if I go and have to stay in hotels. Also with them I will see more local Costa Rica. I need to look at my savings and see if I can afford that trip. I would love to visit all the Central America countries while I am living down here, but we'll have to see if I can afford that. We'll see.

These are mapaches. They have them at the Reserva in Pana also. Actually one day Scott and I did the hike throughout the Reserva before we came to Tikal and there was a mapache that jumped up on the railing and got too close to us. I ran away scared which just made Scott laugh. I have gone to the Reserva so many times and I have never seen one get so close.

The very loud monkeys. Seriously when they yell it makes you look around for dinosaurs.

Cool huge spider we found on one of the paths.

A cooler even bigger spider we later found walking back to our hotel. Know that these were cool to me because they were outside. I would have freaked out if they were in our hotel room. 

This is the most famous temple in Tikal. It is located in the Grand Plaza. When you see t-shirts or anything else advertising Tikal this is the temple that is featured. 

 One of the sides of the Grand Plaza.

We tried several times to get the top of the temple in this picture, but it never worked. Scott and I met at the VIM training last October. That weekend we had several real conversations and the past few days were no different. I am still going through a transition period being here filled with many insecurities and I couldn't have asked for a better person to talk about it all with. We had so many long conversations and I feel like I know more about him than some of the friends I have known for years. He is now in a transition period himself because in the next couple of months he is going to leave Costa Rica an move back to the States. I'm really excited to see what amazing thing he will do next.

No idea who this stone Mayan dude is, but I thought he was pretty neat.

After our first tour we walked back to our hotel and all jumped in the pool wearing our clothes. It was so incredibly hot at Tikal with no breeze. We chilled at the hotel for a few hours then went back into the park by ourselves. We didn't want to pay for the sunset tour, so we just went in alone and did it ourselves. This was my favorite time in Tikal. When we did the tours our guides would just tell us about the temples then we would move on. We never got to explore them because there were always signs saying no climbing which obviously the guides wouldn't let us break. However, when we went out on our own we didn't follow the suggested no enter signs and climbed all over the temples we hiked to. It was so much fun hiking to the top of them and finding ways to crawl across the sides to jump to the next one. Several of the ruins we would walk into them and bats or birds (I could never tell) would fly out. I absolutely loved going out on our own way more than being guided through the park.

We ended up at the Grand Plaza again in time for sunset. We climbed to the highest point of the plaza and watched for awhile. The magnitude of what I was seeing around me was really overwhelming.

This was the other side of the Grand Plaza during sunset. So very beautiful.

After awhile I left the group and climbed on top of another one by myself and sat there watching the sunset and just thinking about being there. We had been talking about my job at the church earlier that day and I kept thinking about missing everyone back home and wondering if I made the right decision. Then sitting there watching the sunset and looking around me I was again reminded that I did. I am experiencing so many amazing things down here which I wouldn't have the opportunity to if I didn't come. It was good to be reminded of that again.

The next morning we did the sunrise tour and after we watched it from Temple 4 we hiked around the rest of the park. I really like this picture of our guide with one of the temples he was telling us about.

After the tour we headed back to the hotel and napped for a couple more hours. Then we had to be out of our rooms by 11:00. However, the shuttle didn't leave for Flores until 2:30, so we all just laid on the couches in the lobby watching TV. The hotel only had electricity for certain hours of the day and during this time there was only electricity in the lobby. They put in documentaries for us to watch. The first one was about other Mayan sites around the world then the next 3 were about the world ending in 2012. Not going to lie I absolutely don't believe that the world will end on December 21st, but it was kind of scary watching those documentaries. Did you know that the Chinese predicted the same date thousands of years ago? Just saying. Let's just hope all the (hopefully made up) scientific proof behind it that these documentaries were referencing are all wrong. After eating lunch laying on the couches like classic Americans we drove back into Flores. We arrived around 3:30 and wasn't getting picked up for the overnight bus back to Guatemala City until 9:00, so we just walked around the town. We ended up taking a boat tour around the island for about an hour.

Who knew Flores was an island?

If you've ever met me you're not going to be surprised by this, but I twisted my foot on the last day of Tikal. I have no idea what I did to it, but it is still pretty swollen and tender. Somehow I hurt the bone on top of my foot. Who knows. As long as I took plenty of Advil I was still ok walking on it. Let's hope it heals itself in the next few days and I don't have to figure out how to deal with this down here in Guatemala.

The overnight bus from Flores to Guatemala City was I think better than the first one. It was a double decker bus, and Scott and I sat in the front seat on the 2nd level. This way we could prop up our feet and look out the huge window which went across the entire front of the bus. It took us awhile to fall asleep, so it was fun to just watch the traffic on the roads. Once we made it to Guatemala City we then took a shuttle to Antigua. I stayed there with them for a few hours walking around town then I caught a shuttle back to Pana at 12:30. Before I left we went to breakfast at a cafe on the main square then walked around the Santo Domingo Hotel which is where if you keep up with my blog my cousin Ashley and I planned out a wedding for my brother last Spring. Such fun memories at that hotel. The next picture makes me laugh because it looks like Scott is Carol Ann and my kid.

I was so exhausted when I left Antigua that I actually fell asleep in the front seat of the shuttle going home. The driver woke me up when we got into Pana and asked where I lived. When I got home around 4:00  I fell asleep on the couch and actually didn't wake up until 9:30 when I moved to my bed. The next morning Heather told me that she came home around 7:00 and actually cooked dinner then spent a couple of hours out in the living room before going to sleep. I must have been way out of it to not wake up during that time. Today I walked to town and went shopping for snacks for my trip tomorrow with Lungi. Then I helped cook lunch with the girls and ate upstairs at the coffee shop. This afternoon I "helped" roast coffee and worked behind the counter getting random coffee orders ready. It was good to be back and spend the day hanging out with friends. Right now I am going to finish packing then head to bed since we are leaving around 6:00 tomorrow morning. It takes 9 hours to drive to Rio Dulce, so we should get there around 4:00. Hopefully this trip will be as fun as the Tikal trip. I really love that since starting January I will have a team in almost every week I am taking this slower time as an opportunity to travel and really get to know more of Guatemala. Hopefully next week when I get home I'll write another blog about how Rio Dulce was an amazing trip also.