tikal

This weekend was our trip to Tikal. I went with one of my housemates, Beth, who is only here for a few more days. Which basically means that even though our ride to the airport was coming to our house at 4am, it was absolutely imperitive that we go out on Friday. We went to a couple of dance clubs...one had a contest to see who is the most sexy. Que sexy! Luckily for us, clubs close at 1 so we got a stellar 2 and a half hours of sleep. Our ride came around 4am, and it was a very bumpy trip to Guatemala city to catch our plane. More waiting in the airport, then an extremely short flight to Flores, which was a tiny airport. The minute we stepped off the plane we felt the oppressive humidty. Then another car ride to Tikal. So, although we tried, napping opportunities did not really exist. We took a tour of the temples, but our group was huge and I have trouble paying attention to tour guides as it is, so I didn't get a ton out of it. It was still fun, though. When we got back we ate lunch and took a really long nap. The hotels only have electricity from 6-10, so we felt gross and sticky pretty much all the time. (There's running water, but it's cold when the electricity isn't on. But actually, that's not so bad.) So anyway, there's not a lot to do in Tikal once the park is closed except eat lazily, so eat we did. And then much needed showers and sleep.

The next morning we woke up around 4:45 to go on a sunrise tour. We got to one of the temples about a half hour before the sunrise, and even though it was too cloudy to see anything it was still very tranquil and relaxing. Then we took another, better, tour. We got to see (and hear) more wildlife. There's the spider monkeys, which look like weird lanky aliens jumping from branch to branch. Then there's the howler monkeys, who can cause quite a commotion. For a while we were right in the middle of the noise...they really sound like monsters that are going to attack you soon.

So after the tour it was about 9:30 or so...we ate breakfast, then took a cold shower, and then wondered what we could do until we left at 2. Basically, not much (since we had to check out of our hotel room). At 2 we went back to Flores, but our flight wasn't until 7, so we decided to kill time in Flores instead of at the airport. Flores is a cute, small island town with tipico shops on every street. A little boring. But oh well, we didn't have the energy to do...fun things that might require energy. We finally flew home, got another ride back to Antigua, and rested. Hurrah!

Today I am getting laundry done which is probably the most exciting thing ever. I want to go buy some chocolates.

Oh, also, I decided to start reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because that's a little easier to explain to my teacher in Spanish than the formation of the U.S. government.