So.....here I am ....again....feeling the stress, frustration, and excitment of traveling in Central America. I started out rough with missing my flight from Greenville, but things turned around when I landed and got right on a bus for Chetumal, south of Cancun. It took about 7 hours to get there......2 more than I was planning. So I ended up sleeping in the bus station for a few hours before I got on what ended up being a VERY long mini-bus ride from Chetumal to Belize City to Tikal. We left Chetumal at 5am. I got in Tikal at 4pm. No air conditioning. No food. No sleep. It was rough. Mom....you would have hated it......because I sure did.When I got to Tikal I met 4 British "chaps" that were very nice. All 4 were medical students. After chatting a bit, we decided it would be cheaper for all of us if we pitched in and got a room togethe at the Jungle Inn.....literally a few yards from the entrance of Tikal.
We had a nice dinner and then decided to go for a sunset tour of Tikal. If you buy your ticket after 3pm it allows you to use the same ticket the next day. We had the entire park to ourselves nearly. And after the British guys found out that I am studying the Maya and archaeology.....questions on top of questions came up. But I LOVED answering them. On our tour today.....they basically got a recap of everything I told them. One of them came up to me and said "You don't lie do you Jason. You know your stuff well." That made me feel good. A also talked to our tour guide and he ended up introducing me to the entire group as the Jungle Inn resident archaeologist. I laughed and had to disclaim that before people started asking too many questions.
So we did the sunrise tour at 4:30am. It was worth it. Monkeys were all in the trees, a nice cool breeze was around, and it was misty everywhere. Later on it got so hot that we just left and laid in the shade for the rest of the afternoon. There were Howler Monkeys everywhere. I took a few videos of them so you can hear what they sound like.
I'm about to leave Tikal and fly to Guatemala City and then a bus to Copan very early in the morning. Sorry this is so short, but you have to pay to use the internet here and its not very cheap so I am typing VERY fast. Hope everyone is doing great!!
I'll be putting more pictures up soon.
