Flores, Guatemala

We have made it to Flores, where the Tikal ruins are just to the
north! Monday was a busy day of bus rides...we took a shuttle bus
(which is more like a large minivan) from Lake Aitlan to Antigua. We
had a wonderful meal there...we had Argentina sausage, cappuchino´s
and tea, 2 twelve ounce steaks (i had about six ounces, anton had like
18), french fries, and it also came with a full salad bar that had
different pastas and veggie salads and such. $45!! It was so much
food. Oh, we also had tiramisu that was killer...mad tight.

We finished that and took a Chicken Bus (the public buses...everyone
is packed in like chickens. They´re kind of like a school bus but
with less wide aisles. And blasting mariachi music.) But anyways, we
got to Guatemala City and had to take a taxi to the bus terminal where
we took a much improved coach bus to Flores. It left around 8:15 and
we arrived at 4:15AM. It had individual seats...but of course none of
the lights worked and there was a padlock on the bathroom. We
managed a little bit of sleep but it was hard...the Guatemalans are
definitely a smaller breed of people than we are. Especially poor
Anton. He´s too big for everything. We just make sure he has an
aisle seat and can either put his legs into the aisle or i put my legs
up and he takes my leg room...it´s like a puzzle. It´s fine, though.
We make it work. It definitely would have been a good idea to bring
one of those U shaped neck pillows...Owell tho. It´s been nice to be in the same place for a few mnights, I much prefer
relaxing and taking my time to frantically packing in too many
activities. Anton feels the same way, so I think we´ll continue to
get along.

When we got off the bus Tuesday morning we were in Santa Elena, which is
like 10 Kilometers from Flores. We sat at a little cafe for a couple
hours reading and looking at stray dogs waiting for stuff to get open.
So many stray dogs.

Flores is a little island on the lake that is surrounded by Santa
Elena...there´s a little road bridge that connects the two. I love
Flores! It´s so pretty, and it´s small so we can figure our way
around pretty well...our hotel is 12 dollars a night and is right on
the lake. Tuesday we slept all day in our hotel and woke up around 5 and (get
this) watched TV!! What the heck!!? Our stupid 12 dollars a night
hotel has TV, hot water, AND a fan. We are truely living like kings
here. We just had a really yummy dinner...cream of asparagus soup
that was not at all creamy and very delcious...I had beef stroganoff
that was rice, veggies, and beef in a really tasty sauce, Anton had a
shishkabob of meats that included Venicin, some sort of jungle rodent,
and a beef of some sort. I liked mine better, but we were both very
happy. Mine had lots of veggies, something I´ve definitely been
missing. Tuesday night we got mad wasted, as per usual. We talked to some hippie chics that got robbed at Tikal at machete point. Pretty absurd. Mad mad wasted.

Wednesday was a nice relaxing day. We slept in, checked out the island, walked across the land bridge to use the bank...ate pizza...booked our tickets for today´s tikal trip and basically just drank besides that. Mad drinking. We met some random people and ran into one of the groups of british chics that was on our volcano hike with us...we told the one really annoying one that she was annoying which was funny. We were drunk enough that it didn´t matter and I didn´t feel bad. Though even now when I´m sober I don´t feel bad. Dumb asian bitch would not stop squealing and freaking out about everything. Jeeeez.

This morning our bus left for Tikal at 10AM, which was hard. Anton had to shake me pretty hard to get me moving, I was just a tad hungover. But we managed and ate burritos on the minivan where we talked to a dutch family and picked up some hitchhiking israeli chics. They didn´t have shaved legs and I was scared.

Anyways, Tikal was SWEET. We probably walked about 6 miles because it´s such a big park, there are the main ruins in the center and then lots of other seperate ruins. One of them we climbed up about 60 meters on this rickety wooden ladder. I was like shaking. I was so scared. It was worth it when we got up there though, you could see for just miles and miles and miles and it was all the tops of the jungle canopy and there were a couple of the other tall ruins poking through...very beautiful.

After our mad partying and wandering and the intense heat and humidity I was definitely ready to leave at 4, I had a headache and was so beat. I passed out on the bus and when I woke up felt much better. We layed and read for awhile and festered in our stink, showered, and went for food and drinks. I ordered nachos but apparently nachos here just means tortilla chips and no cheese. Whatever. Anton had like 3 dinners and was finally full. Tomorrow our bus leaves at 5:30AM for Honduras...it´s about an 8 hour bus ride. I´m going to try and get some mad sleep.

So I guess besides the intense diarrhea everything has been good. But yeah...intense diarrhea. We started our anti-malaria antibiotic today so hopefully that will alleviate it slightly...but i doubt it. It´s a huge plus that bathrooms rarely have toilet paper, you have to throw the available toilet paper in the trash cans (which smells lovely), and nowhere has soap..

Mad, mad, mad tight.

In other news, like everyone here has 1-3 babies. I swear I´ve seen
more babies in the last week than in my entire life. These girls that
look like they´re my age have one baby on the back, carrying a
slightly older baby, and holding hands with a toddler. And then
they´re also begging for money and trying to sell us yarn bracelets.
Definitely making me feel extremely fortunate...there has been some
very intense poverty. Plus chics that look my age are probably
actually like 15. Ridiculous. I guess it makes sense though since
like hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans died in the civil war in the
80´s...lots of the 30-50 year olds are dead. Time to repopulate. But
yeah...way too many babies. I was reading that in Nicaragua abortion
is completely illegal, even if it´s to save the mothers life!
Unbelievable! I guess that´s what happens in a country that´s 60%
catholic and like 25% evangelical. There are evangelical churches
everywhere. I read that lots of the Catholics got killed in the war
because they actually had the balls to speak out against the
killing...so then the evangelicals took hold!