Mayan Jungle

Flo says:

We managed to escape some guy who boarded our bus claiming to work for the bus company and insisting on making all our lodging and transport arrangements for the forseable future. Despite his claims that we'd missed the last bus to El Remate and his less than subtle attempt to send his mates after us offering us an over priced shuttle, we managed to flag down the bus we wanted within 10 mins of hanging around.  Emma nearly wet her knickers in excitement when an actual chicken got on her very first "chicken bus" and made the bargin journey even more exciting.

Had to walk around the lake shore to Mon Ami (which I remember being a long way but couldn't believe how far I'd kept going last time) But on arrival I remembered why it had been worth it and the lake was still beautiful.

Tikal was once again awesome....

Emma sees things differently:

The next day we had an early start as we were heading to Guatemala , luckily we didn’t need an alarm as next door had a whole cock farm to wake us up. As we were waiting for the bus a cockroach suddenly came out of nowhere to say goodbye to me, I think it wanted to give me a kiss as it jumped up at my face (no lie). I of course screamed (it´s OK I didn’t wake anyone as they couldn’t hear me over the cocks) jumped up and down and put my back out (I had my rucksack on at the time). Don’t worry my back is fine now as Flo put it back into place by dropping her rucksack on it from the top of a bus.

Anyway we headed into Guatemala safe and sound. Well we did nearly get thrown out of a boat getting into Guatemala and we had to bribe our way into the country, I didn’t mind being bribed that much as I don’t mind paying for new experiences. I have now officially been bribed and I paid 3 pounds for the pleasure. Our main destination in Guatemala was the Tikal ruins. The Tikal ruins pulled down it´s pants and crapped all over the other ruins in terms of splendour. I think that the jungle setting is what made them so special. To get to the ruins you had to walk through a jungle for about 30 minutes, as soon as we got into the jungle I heard rustling and looked up to see spider monkeys in the tops of the trees. I was in 10 types of happiness, I have always wanted to see monkeys somewhere where they actually wanted to be. I stood looking at them for some time and trying to avoid the various thing that they kept dropping on me. Only Flo´s inpatients to get to the ruins before everyone else made me move on. We managed to make up the time lost by entering the ruins by an unconventional back passage. Flo has been there before and had us climbing up the back of something 1500 years old that we should not have been climbing on (and she calls her self a tree hugging hippy, well actually I call her that). Anyway our extreme destruction paid off and we got to the ruins before anyone else. It is the best feeling, mainly because you get to feel the place without human voices (when I could shut up for more than a minute). We sat on the top of ruin on the grand plaza for a few minutes but was unfortunately joined by someone else who stole the magic. It was still cool though. We headed around the corner to one of the larger temples that is about 50 meters high. We had the place to ourselves which was lucky because you had to go up a near vertical ladder and Flo was crapping herself and took 2 hours getting up. At the top we were above the jungle trees, it was amazing. We were alone for 30 minutes and just sat in silence (no mean feat for me) soaking up the sounds of the jungle, you could hear birds, howler monkeys and these weird things that sound like they are playing the glockenspiel. It is impossible to describe. It wasn’t a totally serious occasion though as a bee decided it wanted in on the action, this made Flo very nervous as there was a 50 m drop so no flapping and running away was allowed. We spent only 2 nights in Guatemala as they also had cocks that woke us up. We decided enough was enough and so we headed into English speaking Belize where the cocks understand shut up or I will ring your bloody neck (in a human vegetarian way).