Our trip to Guatemala was..interesting. We had been a little worried about how we would get to Guatemala. The cheapest way would be to take a bus to the border and then another bus and then taxi. We had heard the border was a little sketchy though. We ended up finding a tour company in San Ignacio that would let us ride on their tour bus for $40 each. We only needed a ride there and already had a tour arranged with the place we were staying at. So we woke up early in the morning, had breakfast, and then went to entrance of our hotel to wait for the shuttle to come pick us up. Instead of a large shuttle van, a man pulled up in a mini suv. His wife and 3 daughters were in there, one of which had to squeeze in the back, trunk type area. He told us he was going to take us to the border, where we would meet the shuttle. He was taking his wife and daughters to the border to buy clothes. It was cheaper to buy clothes there and then sell them for more money in Belize. It ended up being fun riding with them, it was just kind of funny to all be squeezed in a little car with a random family.. haha! Once we got to the border we saw that we were going in a nice big shuttle van that had been driving in front of us the whole time! There had been a miscommunication and we really should have just been on the van the whole time.. oh well!

We didn't have any trouble at the border, probably because we were in between the family. Normally the workers try and charge tourists money to cross the border, even though you really don't have to pay. More on that later though! Then we got on the shuttle and headed to Tikal National Park.

The whole drive was sooo beautiful! It was almost all rolling green hills and farmland with so many cows, horses, and sheep scattered everywhere. I already thought it was worth it to come to Guatemala just for the beautiful drive. One thing we noticed on the drive was that there were huge trucks going around filling up big cans of water for people. The water there is bad, so people have to set out these huge cans once or twice a week to be filled with water. There were hardly any cars in the towns we passed. Most people had a very skinny looking horse/pony tied up in front of their houses and thats how we saw most people traveling around there.

The drive from the border was about 2 hours. Once we got to the park, we paid the entrance fee and headed to our hotel, Tikal Inn. It was one of the 2 places to stay that are inside of the national park. It was actually the most expensive place we stayed, but also the most ghetto! It did include a sunrise tour though(which you can only do if you are staying inside of the park) and it was awesome to be right in the middle of the jungle!



So we checked into our room, the power was out (it was only on for about 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening, since it was in the jungle). It was very hot since it was the middle of the day, but we quickly ate some beans and tortillas and then headed to explore the ruins. Tikal was sooooo amazing! We had thought Xunantunich was amazing, but Tikal was 20 times more impressive! There were so many different ruins and they were all so huge! We didn't have a tour, we just walked all around and explored everything ourselves, which I liked. We hiked so many ruins until we couldn't hike anymore! It was actually nice it was so hot and humid, because hardly anyone else was there. We only saw about 20 other people the whole time we were there!



I love this picture, but my eyes are closed!!! It is so hard for me to take a picture without closing my eyes!!


After exploring for several hours, we headed back to jump in the pool and then had dinner at the inn. I had spaghetti. For some reason, the second week of our trip I kept craving pasta! I think its because I had tortillas, beans, and cheese (pupusas!) for like every meal a week straight! After dinner we found these hammock near our room that were enclosed by a screen. We laid in the hammocks for about half an hour. Then all of the sudden we saw these little animals, (coatimundi) they looked like a mix between anteaters and merecats, but with really long tails that stick straight up. We saw about 30 of them in a pack, running around. There were about 15 little babies that were SO cute! We watched them for a really long time, they couldn't see us because of the screen! We stayed in the hammocks for about an hour more and saw wild turkeys, tons of monkeys, and some other animal that looked like a cat sized guinea pig! We were standing under the monkeys, trying to get a video and two of them started screaming and waving their arms at us and threw a big stick down at us! Haha, funny but a little scary! I was afraid they were going to jump on top of us! There was a mom one with a baby on her back so I think they were trying to protect her.



We headed to bed early because we were going on a tour at 4 in the morning the next day. We woke up right before 4. It was my birthday!!!! I had really wanted to do the sunrise tour on my birthday! It was pitch dark and we had a little flashlight that the front desk had lent us. I couldn't believe it but I had actually slept through the whole night, I don't know how because I had been so scared of spiders and we had no power so I couldn't check for them before bed. Poor Nate barely slept at all because it was so hot. Right when I woke up I said, "I can't believe I slept all night, I was so scared of spiders!" Then I grabbed the flashlight and turned it on and there, on my pillow, an inch from my head was a black spider!! Ahhh!!! At least I saw it after I had already slept all night!! Then as we headed to meet up with our tour, we heard these girls that were in the room 2 doors down say that one of the girls had woken up and there was a black scorpion on her pillow! Staying in the jungle was awesome and definitely worth it for one night, but we were glad it was only one night!

The sunrise tour was AMAZING! We hiked in the pitch dark for about an hour to get to the tallest ruin. Then we hiked to the top of the ruin. The tour guide asked everyone to be completely silent as we waited for the jungle to wake up. It was such an amazing experience to hear all of the sounds of the animals in the jungle and to be on the top of a Mayan ruin. There were so many birds and sooo many howler monkeys. They make the craziest sound, they sounds like a T-Rex! Part of Jurassic Park was filmed there and they actually recorded the sounds of the howler monkeys and used it as the sound for the T-rex in the movie! We stayed up there just listing, watching the sunrise, and soaking it all in for at least an hour. It was the most amazing way to spend my birthday! Then we hiked down and explored the park a little more. We headed back, had breakfast, and then took a taxi to Flores, Guatemala. More on that on the next post!

Our next destination was San Ignacio, Belize. We took the 1 hour water taxi from Ambergris Caye back to Belize City, took a taxi to the bus station, and then took a local bus to San Ignacio. The local buses look like school buses and are cram packed full of people. They drive crazy and are super bumpy! There is a person that stands at the front of the bus and opens the door when the bus stops. You just walk on the bus and sit down and then eventually the person at the front comes and charges you money, depending on where you are getting off. It was a fun experience and we loved the scenery on the drive, everything was so lush and green! It took about 2 1/2 hours to get to San Ignacio. Then we took a taxi to our hotel, Maya Mountain Lodge. This was one of my favorite places that we stayed! It was right in the rainforest and totally surrounded by trees, flowers, vines, and sooo many birds! Our room had the cutest little bouquets of flowers and hibiscus flowers in the bathroom. It had a huge open deck area with 2 hammocks. Every morning we would wake up to the sound of birds, which was nice. One night we both woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of the loudest cricket ever! It sounded like it was right next to us and by a microphone!! We could not sleep the whole night because of that cricket... haha!
One of my other favorite things about the hotel was the food there! They had the prettiest outside eating area. Every morning we had breakfast there. They always gave us fresh fruit and the most amazing breakfast. We had banana pancakes, fresh tortillas, huevos rancheros, fresh fruit, everything was sooo good! For dinner, they had 5 course dinners and we loved everything they gave us! I kept getting attached to all of the places we stayed and never wanted to leave any of them!!


Our first full day in San Ignacio we went to the Saturday Market in town. We browsed all of the booths and ended up buying a hammock and some fresh coconut juice (which came in a plastic baggy with a straw), and pupusas.
Then we took the bus to Xunantunich, a Mayan ruin site. Once we got off the bus, we took a hand cranked ferry across a river(you have to do that to get to the ruins). The man cranking the ferry was so old and so cute! Then we hiked up the looong hill (as other people who had taken a tour bus on the ferry zoomed by us). Once we got to the top of the hill we spotted some howler monkeys! Then we walked all around and up and down the ruins. It was so amazing to see so many ruins and think that they were built so long ago and still standing. We were in awe.

The next day we went cave tubing in Jaguar Paw. We signed up for a tour and were with one other couple, from Canada. When we got to the spot (about an hour from San Ignacio) Nate and I went to go rent some water shoes. Just my luck, the only kind of shoes they had were Crocs, my least favorites shoes in the whole world!! We had no option so I chose between sparkly pink crocs that were too small or camo green ones. I chose the camo. We hiked on a little trail for about 45 mins. to get to the spot we would start floating. On the way, we stopped at a tree and our tour guide said it was full of termites and that Mayans used to eat them. Everyone else ate one so of course I had to! I I shouldn't have trusted the tour guide who said it tasted like mint. It was gross and tasted like dirt. Then we got to a place where we could jump off some rocks. It was fun and the water felt perfect and was the prettiest blue! We hopped on our tubes, put on headlamps, and started to float. The floating is actually pretty slow, it was nice and relaxing. We floated through 2 caves. The first one was about and hour long and the second one was about 1 1/2 hours long. It was really cool floating through the caves, but my favorite part was actually when we were out of the caves because it was sooo pretty! At one part, our tour guide had us get out of the tubes and climb up the side of one of the caves. We had to lay all the way down to squeeze under one part, kind of freaky! Then we hiked up to this little area, the guide wanted us to scare people below. We waited and waited but no one came so we hiked back down. Kind of a strange detour... After the second cave we floated down aways to the part where we got off. We had lunch and then headed back to San Ignacio. This was our last full day in San Ignacio and at Maya Mountain Lodge and we were sad to leave!