Week 13 starts on Sun 14th December with us first in line for the inclusive breakfast at the Yellow House Hostel in Antigua. We had a full day of shopping and general travel admin planned so needed the fortification. We also found fortification in the best hot chocolate in the world again and this time bought a truckload to bring home too. We found time to watch some local Sunday league football action and phone home to talk to the folks. Busy day so how better to finish it than with a beer on the roof terrace followed by a good veggie stirfry for dinner?!
Another bus trip on Mon 15th, this time to Lanquin in Guatemala´s heartlands. We got to Hostel El Retiro mid afternoon and had a choice of accomodation. We decided against the thatch roofed loft room for 2 reasons - a)it had no door so security was potentially a problem, but more importantly for me was b)the room had high potential for wildlife intruders of the insect and spider variety so it was definitely a no-go. Plus entry and exit was via a steep wooden ladder and given that I often need to get up in the night to use the bathroom I also saw potential for broken limbs. So, with all that in mind we opted for the room below which had walls and a door and no ladders etc. We chilled out in their restaurant/bar for a bit before dinner and managed to get several Mayan employees and children involved in a game of Uno. Of course we really didn´t speak each others languages at all but Uno´s a fairly simple game and we weren´t much worried about sticking to the rules. It was far more fun making it up as we went along. One of the older ladies who joined in asked me (in Spanish) how many children we had and was aghast when I said none. She then either suggested we make a baby there that night (?!) or take one of theirs (?!) Little Wendy for example - who was sitting on one of the little girls´laps. I started to feel uncomfortable by the way the conversation was going, even though she was chuckling away, and was relieved when our delicious veggie lasagne appeared providing a much needed distraction.
We had booked on to do a tour of the beautiful nearby Semuc Champey on Tues and were whisked off in the back of a pick up truck at 9.30am with an English girl called Becci who had been on the same shuttle as us the day before, an English guy called Carl, an Aussie guy called Jack and an Aussie couple - Ben and Sophie. We drove out for a hour to some caves where we all stripped down to our swimming costumes and were given candles to light our way. The caves were partially submerged and it was pretty entertaining watching everyone try to swim holding their candles aloft. We were smug as we had brought waterproof headtorches which made it much easier. Although the water was refreshing it wasn´t really cold and it was great fun exploring in the dark. I didn´t even freak when a bat flew right at my head. There were various challenges along the way, including rope ladders up and down mini waterfalls and jumping off rocks into pools and only after an hour and a half in the caves did we start to feel chilly and came out. We then had our packed lunches from El Retiro (sandwiches wrapped in banana leaves) before being given an car inner tube and then taken upstream for a tubing session. The water in the river was a fair bit cooler than in the caves but was moving really slowly so sitting in the tube and drifting downstream was an altogether relaxing experience. The only things that would have improved it would have been a wee bit more sunshine and a beer to sup along the way! Back on dry land we were challenged to jump off the road bridge back into the river we had just tubed down. The boys all went for it whereas Sophie and I didn´t even pretend to consider it. Thankfully Becci stepped up for the girls and made the leap. After that we walked up to the Semuc Champey pools park where we did a very steep walk up to the mirador (viewing point) and got a fabulous view of the pools below. Semuc is famous for being a natural bridge where one river actually flows over another and the upper one was stepped into a series of pools, all in shades of blue and green. Our appetites suitable whetted we scampered back down and got into the water again. Bathing in the pools was wonderful and while the boys all did jumps and dives from one pool to the next, us girls lounged and chatted. The last part of the tour was another challenge set up by our tour guide Elvis (yes, it is an unfeasible name but it´s funny). He wrapped a rope ladder round a rock and threw it over a waterfall and then encouraged each of us to climb down. All of us did too - even me and Sophie the group scaredy cats. Once down the only way back was up the same way and I still can´t decide which was sketchier. A character building experience it´s fair to say. Once back at El Retiro there was a scrum for the hot showers and then we all stuffed our faces at the veggie Guatemalan buffet in the restaurant. So much good food, such comparatively small stomachs. We played uno, chatted and drank cocktails with Becci, Ben and Sophie until late into the night.
Unfortunately we had to leave the lovely El Retiro early the next morning to catch yet another shuttle to Flores in northern Guatemala. We both felt a little tender as the drinks from last night came back to haunt us but thankfully we were the only two going all the way to Flores so could stretch out and sleep and the driver stopped whenever requested for toilet and food breaks. It was a pretty chilled journey made interesting by a novel river crossing but we were glad to arrive in Flores that afternoon. We had to transfer into a taxi in Santa Elena to go on to Flores (which is an island connected by a causeway). We still aren´t sure of the purpose of the vehicle switch but it gave the driver´s companion an opportunity to show us a hotel room (which we ended up taking after comparing it to our other choice) and he also sold us bus tickets on to our next destination. Ok, so we might have been sitting targets but it was a good deal and he made it real easy for us! We circumnavigated Flores a couple of times in pursuit of the best place for dinner before deciding on the first place we looked at, Cafe Yax-Ha which served traditional Mayan food.
I regret to tell you that by the time Thurs morning rolled round, James had managed to convince himself that he had caught rabies from one of the coatis at Panajachel nature reserve. I wish I could tell you that he was only half serious but he wasn´t. So serious was he that we had to take a taxi out to the hospital in Santa Elena where he was looked at by a doctor who examined the scratch site and declared "No hay problema" (There´s no problem). Unconvinced by this somewhat blase approach we then had to go to a clinic down the road and get looked at by another doctor who also proclaimed he had nothing to worry about. The scratch site was clean and totally free of infection so no need to worry. Back to Flores then for breakfast! We caught a bus out to the grand Mayan ruin of Tikal that afternoon where we had decided to camp the night before exploring the ruins early the next morning. We had sent our tent home from Costa Rica but had the hammocks we had bought in Nicaragua so hired a palapas to hang them from. I was concerned about mosquitos so we hired a couple of nets. I would like to say that they were bona fide mosquito nets, but they weren´t. Mine was really just a old net curtain cunningly rearranged to do a new job. And it smelt suspiciously of cat wee. I told myself this was deliberate protection against attacks from jaguars in the night. We had an early tea in one of the comedors outside the park grounds and then settled in for our first night hammocking. Several things occured to me as I tried to sleep that night. 1)Jungles get a lot colder at night than you might think. 2)The smell of cats wee is not very nice. 3)Any, and I mean ANY sound you hear in the jungle at night is almost definitely a jaguar or other large carniverous creature with designs on you for it´s dinner.
We were both extremely glad that we had booked in for an early tour on Fri morning as it meant we had an excuse for getting up early. We joined the tour group at 6am and our guide, Chino, took us off into the park. The idea was that we might get to see the sunrise from the top of one of the temples of Tikal but unfortunately the weather was cloudy and all we could see from the top of Temple 4 (the tallest one) was mist with a few tree tops poking through. We stuck it out for a while though and were rewarded with a spine tingling view of the top of a nearby temple emerging as the mist cleared. Very atmospheric. Chino took us through all sorts of short cuts where we got to see spider monkeys - but none of the jaguars that had been lurking round our hammocks last night. Chino was extremely knowledgeable about the site and Mayan culture and told us so much more than we could ever have gleaned from a guide book. Tikal is an immense site and the ruins we explored had been discovered completely covered in jungle with tree roots having ripped apart most of the structures. They have only cleared this 20% as it´s involved and expensive work and every now and again we would pass a huge grassy mound covered in trees and vegetation which had another temple underneath. The tour lasted a total of 5 and 1/2 hrs by which point the site had become hot and crowded so, having seen pretty much everything, we decided to head back to Flores. One blasting hot shower and an awesome pasta dinner later and we both slept like the proverbial that night.
No rest for the wicked though and on Sat 20th we were on the move again, this time to Belize. We caught a shuttle to San Ignacio at 8am, crossed the Guatemala/Belize border with no problems and arrived in San Ignacio at about 11.30am. Belize is totally different from the rest of Central America. It used to be a British colony so the official language is English. They also have a much more mixed population so it was quite a new experience for us. We checked into a hotel that promised much and delivered only a dingy room with old furniture and a strong whiff of mothballs. We headed out for some brunch and after a brief perusal of what San Ignacio had to offer we realised that we wouldn´t be spending much time there at all. We spent the afternoon checking emails and then reading and chilling with a drink at the lovely Cafe Sol where we also had dinner - simply outstanding veggie wraps. Yum.
