Following the Dream

Christian June 12th, 2008

       Our trip to Flores required a 7:30am shuttle to the airport where we waited in line for 30 minutes to check-in. We were then informed that they had overbooked the flight and we would have to wait till the 5pm flight. We were bummed, we had nowhere to stay and had wanted to book a tour of Tikal for early the next day. The airline did offer to put us up in a hotel for the day and provide us with lunch. So we were resigned to a boring afternoon watching TV in a hotel room, when suddenly the lady says here are your tickets we have 2 seats available for you. Huh? You just spent the last 15 minutes explaining to us there was no room due to “weight restrictions” and now we can go? We didn’t question a good thing and headed to security where our jar of peanut butter was confiscated. Other people had coffee, food, etc and we were a little pissed because they also made us buy ziploc baggies for our deoderant. We had never encountered this safety precaution even in the U.S. So after a rough start to our morning, we waited some more at the gate, where the plane was almost a whole hour late taking off. It was a 56 seat plane with propellers. By now we are a little uncomfortable flying but the short 45 minute flight landed without incident. We grabbed a taxi who tried to overcharge us because of “gas prices” He wanted $6 for a 2km ride to the hostel, we argued that it wouldn’t take a whole tank of gas for 2km and in the end saved one whole dollar.

Our hostel luckily had one double room available which we took. We thought of it as a tree house. You climbed up some steep steps of death to a little platform which had 2 rooms built into a tree. The room was a decent size and had a fan. Here’s the catch, 2 sides of the room where completely open, with only a curtain, no screens in the windows. We were just enjoying the breeze coming into the room when a thunderstorm rolled in and started to drench the room. The wind was so strong and the branches were smacking the roof loudly, and knocking fruit out of the trees all over the place.  The curtains were blowing in, whipping furiously in the wind.  I jammed the table up against the wall shoving the curtains between the table and the wall.  That did not last long, the wind ripped the curtains from my attempt of keeping them closed.  We finally used duct tape to tape the curtains over the windows and keep the rain out. We thought for sure the roof would rip off or a fruit missile would come crashing through the window. We relaxed in our room and watched a movie. We had booked the sunrise tour of Tikal which meant a 3am wake up so we headed to bed early.</p>

     The horrible sound of the alarm went off at 2:55am. We simply pulled on our clothes, grabbed our camera and a packed lunch (provided by our hostel) and met the driver at the front door. It turned out there were about 10 people crazy enough to take the tour from our hostel, but we drove around Flores and picked up about 15 more people. Unfortunately, 2 girls where not even awake when we stopped to pick them up so we had to wait and that made us run very late. After a nice nap for the hour drive to Tikal we arrived in pitch darkness. No stars or moon thanks to the clouds. So we met our guide and we took off. Literally! Since we were running so late, we had to run the 1.5km to the temple where we were to climb up and watch the sunrise. It was pitch dark, and we are running through the jungle to the sounds of howler monkeys and bird calls all around. Definitely an experience. Somehow we managed to keep up with the guide, although not everyone could and we made it to the temple with 10 minutes to spare before official sunrise. Temple 4 is the tallest temple at 70 meters and they have built wooden steps up the back to the top. After arriving at the top out of breath we were greeted by a view of the jungle over the treetops. Unfortunately, it was very cloudy and we barely got a glimpse of the sunrise but we did enjoy the view of far off temples scattered throughout the Tikal ruins.

     With our usual luck, of course it started to rain. We made a mad dash down the stairs to the cover of a shelter. The rain only lasted about 20 minutes which the guide used to tell us a little about the ruins and himself. His favorite topic seemed to be about his childhood and he spent a lot of time showing us different plants around the ruins. We walked with our guide for about 3 hours seeing different temples and climbing up a few more. The ruins are huge and currently encompass about 16 sq km and there are over 3,000 buildings. They are currently still excavating, studying, and rebuilding all over the place. You could see the work being done and the long slow process it takes to restore the buildings. The temples themselves are huge and have amazing views from the tops. At the end of our tour we realized we had learned little about the actual ruins that made any sense and had spent more time learning about jungle plants. We heard others on the tour complaining as well. Since we usually don’t have a guide we weren’t too upset. We had one more hour before our shuttle and took a chance to take some pictures.

     We made it back to town around 12:30 and laid down to relax for awhile. Our 9 hour tour had taken it out of us, or maybe it was just the 3am wake-up. The rest of the day was spent doing laundry, packing and eating an early dinner. We were tired and passed out early after watching some TV. Once again we had to be up at early for our shuttle to Belize. We are starting to think we will never get to sleep in.

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