Ruins...shmuins...

Well, to all you loyal blog readers out there, sorry it's been a few days since I've updated...but I'm starting to feel like my fan base is dwindling (or at least the comments are...hint, hint!). Anyway, I had quite the weekend and hope this entry does at least a bit of justice to the experience.

So this weekend I took a trip to Tikal. Tikal is in the northeast part of Guatemala and would take somewhere between 10 and 16 hours to drive there. Well, considering I only have Saturday and Sunday off, I opted for the plane ride. I couldn't convince any other volunteers to join me so I was on this mission solo (I swear, I really have made friends...and they at least do a good job of pretending to like me...)

The adventure started at 4:00 am Saturday. I was picked up in a shuttle from my house and carted to the teeny-tiny airport for domestic flights. Now I know you all realize what a shy person I am so you might be surprised to find out that I found a friend right away. Her name was Karen and she was my travel partner in crime the rest of the weekend (and it's possible she is reading this blog right now...if you are, Hi Karen!) Here is a picture of her:

Ok, so we boarded a tiny plane (a la Kenya style) and off we went to Tikal. After a 45 minute flight when I thought I my eardrums might actually explode all over my new friends, we landed. Let's just say, when I walked out of that airplane, I discovered a new definition of the term humidity. Again, somehow managed to fail to read the fine print of "JUNGLE" and was immediately drenched from head to toe (you know it's hot when your forearms are sweating profusely...)

We got our stuff and headed to our hotel...a "modest" 2-star joint called the "Jungle Lodge"...whatever youa re picturing is probably actually pretty darn close to what it was...except that we had no electricity for 22 of 24 hours a day. But I was in Tikal and I was going to enjoy these ruins...even if I melted.

So I slathered on the suntan lotion SPF 70 and 35% deet bug spray and we were off for a 4-hour hike of the ruins. Tikal is considered one of the world's biggest ruins sites and when they discovered it, they found more than 3,000 buildings and assume that 90,000 Mayans lived there making it one of the world's biggest cities at the time.

It's hard to describe what the ruins were like...first of all, they were huge. Essentially huge steps of stone leading to pretty much no where and having no space inside. The huge majority of the ruins were temples to honor dead guys...

So imagine this...several thousand Mayans, who are all about 4 foot 8 inches, lugging rocks for 30+ years to build a temple-y thing to remember some guy that probably most of the people never even met...oh and by the way, they couldn't use wheels (religious thing...) Pretty amazing.

So after 4 hours of dragging my very sweaty tush around these ruins, I started to understand why the Mayans may have left the place behind...but it was off to lunch.

We got into the no-electricity dining area at my 2-star resort and what do they serve? Soup. Yep, steaming soup. It was hilarious. So Karen and I had been paired up with another American couple from Colorado for our tour. Very nice couple but there was one pretty major problem...

Ok, so it's 95+ degrees, 100%+ humidity and I just walked for 4 hours and am eating soup. Not much was sounding better at that point than a dip in the pool at the hotel. This is where the problem comes in. So the guy in the other couple just happened to be a pool and restaurant inspector in the states. And when I mentioned that I could hardly wait to get myself into that pool, he gave me a look of disgust.

"Yeah, we are NOT swimming in that pool...it had a subtle smell of sewage and I just don't think the levels are 'up to par'?"

Are you freaking kidding me??? I'm covered in sweat and now I shouldn't swim in the pool? So for the next 4 hours, I tried to find a shady place near the pool and dipped my feet in now and then...not really what I had in mind but it was a good afternoon.

We all went to dinner that night (after I gave the guy explicit instructions NOT to tell me anything about the restaurant) and then hit the hay early...because we had another early start in the morning.

We woke up at 4:00 am to trek back into the ruins, climb the tallest temple and watch the sunrise over the Mayan ruins.
So I've been sitting here for about 5 minutes stuck at this point in the story because I simply cannot figure out a way to describe it. I took about 30 pictures and not one of them show what it was like. Will you all just get down here so you can see these things for yourself already???

After the sunrise, we did another 3 or so hours through the ruins. Now, don't get me wrong, they were amazing. But lets just say I won't be going back to archeology school anytime soon. I guess I'm just one of those people who needs about 15 minutes to see the Smithsonian and 5 to get through the Louvre. So after 7 hours of looking at piles of rocks, I guess you could say I had my fill of ruins for a while.

On a whim, I decided, what better time to do some ziplining? So Karen and I were off to zip our way over the canopy of the trees with the monkeys. Again, very tough to describe but I have a video!! Yes ladies and gentleman of the blog, I am posting my first video...



So after the ziplining, i twas back to the hotel where I took my life in my own hands and went swimming...even if I contract some fatal illness, it was completely worth it.

After a very short and busy 36 hours, it was back to the airport and heading back to Antigua.

When we got back, I again realized just how much I have fallen in love with this city. And I can hardly believe I have less than one month left here. I'm not sure if it was just the drop in humidity or the rise in the altitude but on that tarmac I realized that in less than 2 days I had left Antigua, seen thousands of ruins, watched two sunrises, swam in an infested pool, flown in a jungle with monkeys and returned back to Antigua...and I my only wish was that you were all there with me!

xoxo,
Debra