Mayans, monkeys and morons.

Mayans, monkeys and morons. Tikal National Park, Guatemala

Tikal National Park, Guatemala We did manage to leave our little island paradise albeit reluctantly to head for Guatemala. We had to take a ferry ride to Belize city and then a four hour bus trip to Tikal. The trip started a little poorly and continued to go down hill from there. We had the pleasure of being trapped on the boat and the bus with the most annoying, offensive and irritating person that either of us has ever met. He was this massive American called John. He had a word limit that he had to hit every day and it must have been well into the millions. He spoke at an eardrum bursting decibel and I was fairly certain had a mild to sever case of tourettes. On the bus, he would start singing very loudly lyrics from ghetto rap songs. Something about *****es and hos etc… At the border with Guatemala, he started talking about the joint he smoked this morning to mellow him out after all of the coke he did the night before. Joel and I put as much distance between us and him as possible for fear of being Banged up Abroad. I’m still not sure how he made it into the country. As we pulled into the little town called El Remate on the shores of Lago de Peten where we were staying. We bid goodbye to our abrasive friend and settled into our accommodation. It was quite the step up from our last place. By that I mean that it had hot water and A/C and cost a whopping $25USD a night. The one thing that our little town did not have was an ATM. We had very little money that we could change so we were hanging on by a slim financial thread. We were able to book a tour headed to the ruins at Tikal on our credit card thankfully. The ruins at Tikal were beautiful. The huge city is still only partially uncovered. So many massive temples and structures are still covered by jungle growth. The selva was abundant with wildlife we spotted spider monkeys, coati, turkeys and a toucan. We even managed to howl at some howler monkeys. The buildings that they have uncovered seem to magically emerge out of trees. It was also almost devoid of tourists. This was quite the welcome change after the ruins in Mexico that seemed to contain millions of people. There was one person at the ruins that more than made up for the lack of other tourists. That’s right. The most annoying man in the world stumbled out of a van to join our tour group. Arggh. He was just as annoying as on our trip over. He tried to tell our tour guide that he had no idea what he was talking about and he had a bit of a habit of spitting all over the temples. He even managed to be on the same shuttle bus back as us. Yay! Thankfully, his drugs must have worn off, so he slipped into a coma for the whole trip. We aren’t only meeting complete idiots on this trip. We met a lovely Australian/ English couple who began their journey in Canada. They were living there and decided to drive their car down to Panama. They had so many cool stories like when they picked up a pair of hitchhikers in Belize who turned out to be prison guards/ reggae singers. They are definitely putting our trip to shame. We leave tonight to make our way south to the shores of lake Atitlan. To get there, we have to take a 9 hour overnight bus to Guatemala city, an hour transfer to Antigua, a 6 hour layover there and then a 3 hour bus ride to San Pedro la Laguna. Wish us luck. UPDATE: Hi guys, Joel here. We’ve created an inspirational travel website designed to inspire your next destination. For more information on Tikal, check it out.

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