Weds - Tikal and more

I don’t think any of us slept well, and we were all up by 545 am. I showered and was off to explore the city, actually an island called Flores in Guatemala sans any penalty time from the Amazing race.



Cleaning windows in Flores, Guatemala.

Walked all around, found a place to get fresh bananas, two of ‘em cost me $1 guat, about 17 cents.


This is another island in the lake. Only access is by water.






Those aren't toys!


The local beer is Gallo, and the logo looks like a rooster.. We saw the logo everywhere…and I do mean everywhere, just look below!


I think the graffiti translates to all gringos will be checked for guns. If none are found, they will direct you to a place where you can buy one.


Back from the walk, I decided since I was here and was suppose to be some of the best coffee around I’d give it a try.. Last time was when I was 16, and I was at a seminar by Cains coffee on how to make a perfect cup.



Anyway, coffee was $10, coffee con leche (milk) was $15, $5 ea. I tried it, it was ok, but how could I compare?

We all ordered breakfast, but no-one really know what we were ordering. That year of Spanish in high school didn’t get me very far today.

Once the food was delivered, we were pleasantly surprised. It was good and we all considered ourselves lucky.



Breakfast!



Notice the Gallo on the Christmas Tree?




We loaded up the car and left Flores, and went to San Something…still a really run down town.





$29.89 gal


We found the local market and walked around this place for a while, actually almost got lost in the place. This was in a covered building(s) of some sort, very narrow sidewalks (some places, only 1 person wide) that kept on twisting and turning.



The local mall



This place had a lot of cheep import crap, no tourist stuff here! But take a look at some of the pictures below. Yes, those are live chickens, right next to the ones that they just cleaned. Strange place for a USDA processing plant! Ha! I kept on looking for the Amazing Race staff, as I know they had to be here. After this trip, I have a better understanding of what it must be like to be in the amazing race.





You will also get a flavor of what the place looked like.


Fresh tortillas

Fresh Chicken anyone?

We escaped without any injury and started to Tikal, the Mayan ruins. Some consider the New York City of the Mayan world.

One stop at a local store, it looked like a grocery story from the outside, but once inside it looks like a scaled down Wal-Mart with a big grocery department.

We picked up a few things, and proceeded to the check out. I noticed that he clerk’s nametag was flipped over backwards. It said WAL-MART!

Sure enough there were some posters on the wall that said Wal-mart Central America.

We stopped back by the Guatemala Tourist Center for a map.

This horse had a rope, most didn't. They were all over the highway. One I saw had a gaping 5 in cut on the right hip. I m guessing it got hit.

Finally!

TiKal

On the way to the geocache, this was before we had to bushwhack the jungle.

Yea, another geocache and another country!

At arrival of Tikal it costs us $150 q ($22 us) each to get in. Parking is about 1.25 miles from the epicenter and would be a long walk. We were lucky, and caught a ride up in a truck. Once to the center, climbed up to one of the tops, about 6 or 7 stories on wooden stairs on the outside of the ruins. Great view, the howler monkeys were screaming as were a lot of different kinds of birds.

Below is the log for the geocache.

I wanted to find the geocache that was in the area, and we took off on foot on the trail. The trail we were on soon disappeared and it was about .15 miles to the cache, so we pressed on. Its very difficult to get a reading in the jungle, and I am sure that we were all over the place. Like a lot of geocaches, once you get close to the final, you find an easier way in/out, and this was no different.

The GPS had me about about 30 feet in the jungle on the other side of the road. We looked a bit, but no luck. Back to the path where we could get a better reading and looked at the hint, and looked a bit more ended up finding it about 100 feet from where I was first looking.

The cache itself could use some help. The plastic bag inside the container was full or water, the post it note log book was to wet to sign, but I tried. If the next person could bring a better container and a new logs book this cache could continue.

Thanks for placing the cache, and allowing me to bag another country


This was a bug bite... some kind of big black bug

This Cemetery had lots of vaults above ground. Most all were very colorful.

Another view of the dirt road they call a highway.

Doing laundry.

Heading home from the river laundry.

This was a gal from the states, not to far from Land of the Ozarks.

Her friends folks have place at Sueno. This pic is for Katie, the daughter. Her friends folks are going to e-mail her while they are here.

Thursday am Up at 530, off to the study hall building so I can use my computer.

The resort we are staying at has an agreement with the local college (galen) to house some of the students, so the have a screened in porch that they call study hall.

Ok, I slipped in a few from Thursay.. stay tuned, more pictures and blog soon!