Advice on taking a trip like this

From Iain: We traveled in Peru, Guatemala, and Belize for six months with our daughters, ages 9 and 11, and had an absolutely wonderful time. If you have the opportunity to do something similar I recommend that you do whatever you need to make it happen. Here are a few words of advice based on our experience.

• Give yourself enough time to get to know a few places at a deeper level than the casual visitor. We were able to spend extended periods in a number of different destinations, which slowed the pace of the trip to something more manageable, allowed us to explore more fully, and made it easier to connect with local people. We were able to reduce our costs considerably too by taking advantage of long-term accommodation rates and cooking for ourselves more often than you can when you're continually on the move.
• That said, there were times when it made sense to keep moving, when traveling overland across large distances, for example. We generally interspersed long travel days with rest days so that we would stay in some locations just one or two nights. On a trip like this, traveling becomes an integral part of the whole experience and in some cases the cliche is true, it is often more about the journey than the destination.
• To keep our travel costs down and to get closer to the authentic heart of South and Central America, we often took local transportation but not exclusively. It can be pretty grueling traveling long distances in local buses, so as a treat or when feeling a little under the weather we sometimes went for the costlier tourist transportation option (the main advantage being the guarantee of a seat). We ended up striking a pretty good balance overall, so I suppose I would advise mixing it up like we did and using both local and tourist transportation options as needed.
• A major part of our trip was taken up with food, not just the eating part but also finding places to eat or food to buy to cook ourselves. And when we weren't doing this we spent a lot of time thinking about food. As with transportation we mixed it up a little and ate at both local and tourist restaurants (although more of the former) and cooked for ourselves using both local ingredients and more familiar global ingredients. We also ate food prepared in local markets, which in hindsight was perhaps not the best decision we made. On a trip this long it was perhaps inevitable that we would have stomach problems, but we may have been able to avoid them by being even more careful about what we ate. To minimize your chance of getting sick, eat only at restaurants where you're certain that basic food safety practices are being followed and make sure that any food you prepare yourself is safe (e.g., use a biocide solution on fresh fruits and vegetables). We didn't always follow these suggestions at the beginning of the trip, but by the end we certainly were.
• We were much better about consuming only purified water, however. Including for brushing our teeth. To avoid buying and lugging around an endless supply of bottled water, we invested in a high quality water purifier before we left. In places where we had access to a kitchen we also used water that we'd boiled and then cooled.
• Make sure you have adequate medical insurance and be prepared to deal with medical problems as they arise. We were fortunate to find good English-speaking doctors even in remote parts of Guatemala. We were also able to make changes to our travel schedule when one of our daughters got sick.
• Consider doing some voluntary work while on your trip. There are organizations crying out for help everywhere and it is easy to make a large, positive change in many places with just a little effort.
• Try to connect with local people wherever you travel. It can be easier on one level to experience a place as a tourist - taking the organized tours, staying in the tourist hotels, eating at the tourist restaurants, talking with the other tourists - but you'll get a whole other experience of a country by breaking out of the tourist bubble and engaging more intimately with local people. It isn't hard to do this either, whether through eating at local restaurants, visiting local markets (not the big tourist ones but the smaller ones the locals go to), taking tours with locally-owned operators, volunteering with local organizations, and interacting with local people (three brief examples from our experience - the girls often played with the children of the managers of a hostel we stayed at; Tanya traded English and Spanish lessons with a local market stall owner; I played pickup futbol with some local taxi drivers).
• Don't assume that you'd never be able to do something like this. Many employers can probably handle you taking a leave-of-absence. Most schools can probably handle your children taking a long break and most children would be fine with this too (if not, do as we did and find a school for them to attend in the country you're visiting). A trip like this needn't be that expensive - we spent about the same as we would have spent staying at home (and that includes the cost of the flights). To make it more affordable consider renting out your home, as we did. And if you give them this opportunity, your children may surprise you - they can handle new foods, long journeys, unfamiliar surroundings, and challenging situations far better than you might think.

It's good to be home

From Iain: We arrived home on Saturday after a two-hour ferry and ten-hour drive from Vancouver Island.  The drive was particularly long because we'd forgotten to put our winter tires on our car before we left (it was June!), so we had to drive particularly cautiously over the snowy passes.  We carried chains as a precaution but didn't end up having to use them.  It's strange to be back in Nelson again after being away for so long, but it sure is nice - we wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

If you've been a regularly reader, I hope you've enjoyed our blog.  I'll make one last post with some thoughts and words of advice for anyone feeling inspired to do something similar.  I'll end now with a plea for donations.  Please consider making a monetary contribution to either Kusi Kawsay, the Peruvian school that Bethany and Sierra attended from August to October, or Grupos de Mujeres y Hombres por la Paz, the Guatemalan community organization that we volunteered with in November.  As a suggestion, one way to honour the incredible work being done by either organization would be to make a donation of $1 for each of the 60 or so blog entries we've written.  Your generous donations can go a long way in Peru and Guatemala.  Of course, if you've been amazed and astounded at the sheer literary genius of our writing and swooned at the gorgeous photos, donations of more than $1 per blog entry would be very welcome too.  Details of how to donate are available at both the websites linked above.  If this is something you are able to do, thank you!

Some Questions Answered

Q: Who would win in a race between bus drivers from Peru, Guatemala, and Belize?
A: The Peruvian bus driver since he is able to make his bus go a little bit faster by honking his horn every few seconds.

Q: How many people can you fit in a collectivo (public minibus)?
A: One more than there is currently, no matter how full.

Q: How much does a taxi cost?
A: Twice as much as the guidebook says.

Q: Which are itchier, mosquito bites or bed bug bites.
A: Bed bug bites since they typically come in threes.

Q: How can hostels best annoy their guests?
A: By charging extra for children not needing an extra bed, claiming lukewarm showers are hot, and serving fruit loops, freeze-dried toast, and instant coffee for the included breakfast.

Q: What is the most annoying late night/early morning noise?
A: Tie between barking dogs, crowing roosters, fireworks, and pounding stereos.

Q: What is the most well-known quality of Canada among Latin Americans?
A: It's cold.

Q: What is the hardest thing to readjust to on returning to Canada?
A: Tie between being able to rinse your toothbrush under the tap and remembering to chuck used toilet paper in the toilet instead of the trashcan.

The Best and the Worst

Top Threes:

• Meals: Squeaky cheese, sweet finger potatoes, and broad beans (Peru); Fried plantains, frijoles, and tortillas (Guatemala); Bean and cheese pupusas and coconut empanadas (Belize)
• Restaurants: Trattoria Escondida (Pisac); Hearts Cafe (Ollantaytambo); Rainbow Cafe (Antigua)
• Drinks: Hot chocolate in Chivay; Pisco sours in Pisac; Fruit smoothies in Pisac
• Accommodations: Virginia's house in Arequipa; Pisac Inca Hostal; Lebeha Cabana in Hopkins
• Accommodation breakfasts: Virginia's house (Arequipa); Hotel Pukara (Puno); Hotel Nuestro Sueno (San Antonio, Lake Atitlan)
• Fruits: Chirimoya; Maracuya; Guayaba
• Journeys: Boat to Uros Floating Islands; Train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes; Lancha (boat) across Lake Atitlan from San Pedro to Panajachel
• Places in Peru: Colca Canyon; Lake Titicaca; Machu Picchu
• Places in Guatemala and Belize: Antigua; Tikal; Hopkins beach

Bottom Threes:

• Foods: Cau cau (cow stomach stew); Papitas (hairy pig's feet in a sauce); spaghetti with spicy tomato sauce for breakfast
• Journeys: Bus from Puno to Cusco (with violent movies playing and street protestors throwing rocks at the windows); Collectivo from Nebaj to Santa Cruz Del Quiche (jam-packed, crazy driver, covered widows you couldn't look through); First-class bus from Guatemala City to Flores (late, cold, and disfunctional toilets)

Flowers and Fish Heads

With acknowledgement to Nelson's Express newspaper Fish Heads and Flowers column, here is our take on the good and the not-so-good aspects of our trip.

• Flowers to Nelson Waldorf School faculty for agreeing to Tanya's leave of absence.
• Flowers to Carron Mulligan for helping make our trip possible (by taking Tanya's class while we were away) and giving us good travel advice.
• Flowers to MaryAnn and Rick for transporting us to and from Victoria Airport and looking after our car while we were away.
• Flowers to Christine, Michelle, Sean, and Veronika for taking care of the house and Shadow while we were away.
• Flowers to Max, Juana, Fabricio, and Pedro at EDEAQ Spanish Language School in Arequipa, Peru for helping us get started learning Spanish.
• Flowers to Virginia for giving us a gentle introduction to Peru.
• Flowers to Delfin on Taquile Island who helped us so much while Bethany was sick.
• Flowers to Pisac Inca Hostal for nice people and cheery, clean rooms and a lovely garden.
• Flowers to Lili at Pisac Inca Hostal for being our friend and working hard to make our stay so pleasant.
• Flowers to Kusi Kawsay school for welcoming us and giving the girls three months of immersive Andean culture.
• Flowers to Rosaura, Yessica, Fielding, Roman, Hugo, Rene, and everyone else at Kusi Kawsay.
• Flowers to David, Abraham, Patrona, Jacinto, Miguel, Gaspar and all the other members of Grupos de Mujeres y Hombres por la Paz in Nebaj.
• Flowers to accommodation managers everywhere we went for helping us with arranging tours and other accommodation.
• Flowers to Tripadvisor for consistently providing better information than our guidebooks.
• Flowers to the makers of sea bands for helping to limit travel sickness on the speeding buses.
• Flowers to the doctors in Guatemala and Belize who helped us when we got sick.
• Flowers to the makers of the medications that made us better and kept us well.
• Flowers to the makers of the gizmos and gadgets that smoothed our path and kept us entertained, in particular our netbook computer, iPod Touch, Steripen hand-cranked fluorescent light water purifier, digital camera, moka pot (caffettiera), hand-cranked flashlight, Swiss army knife.
• Flowers to Nelson Public Library for providing us with an endless supply of free audiobooks and ebooks.
• Flowers to Tanya for arranging the focal points of our trip - going to Kusi Kawsay school in Pisac for three months and volunteering with Grupos de Mujeres y Hombres por la Paz in Nebaj.
• Flowers to Iain for organizing all the trip details.
• Flowers to Bethany and Sierra for being good sports and their enthusiasm every day of our trip no matter what we were doing.

• Fish heads to amoebas - you make us sick.
• Fish heads to bedbugs for making sleep itchy night after night.
• Fish heads to the stray dogs all over the place (although they'd probably just scarf them down).
• Fish heads to the Tikal tarantula for ambushing Sierra.
• Fish heads to speeding bus drivers.
• Fish heads to the handful of scam artists we encountered (although there really weren't too many).
• Fish heads to locals trying to touch Sierra's blonde hair, which was cute at first but got old quickly.
• Fish heads to ultra sensitive guests of Pisac Inca Hostal complaining about the girls making too much noise while they played in the middle of the day.
• Fish heads to western hippies trying to sell their junk at local handicraft markets.
• Fish heads to Lonely Planet for publishing disappointing guidebooks with outdated information and misleading advice (when traveling 20 years ago Lonely Planet books were the gold standard and worthy of their reputation, now not so much it seems).
• Fish heads to Hospedaje Beho in Pisac for dark, dingy rooms, cold showers, and scary decorations.
• Fish heads to U.S. Immigration at Fort Lauderdale Airport for being rude to visitors and making the immigration process as miserable as possible.

Return to Canada

From Iain: On the 23rd we spent a comfortable night at a bed and breakfast near the Guatemala City airport (despite the presence just outside our room of, remarkably, our first cockroach on this trip).  We then flew to Fort Lauderdale, anxious about our onward connection to Las Vegas, particularly since the plane ended up departing an hour and a half late.  On landing, we fairly whizzed through immigration (a complete contrast to our previous experience here), baggage claim, customs, baggage re-check, and security (where we had our explosive peanut butter confiscated), making it to our connecting gate with time to spare.

An uneventful flight got us to Las Vegas late on Christmas Eve, then a high-tech taxi (TV playing in the back and metered!) took us to our hotel, where the girls laid out their stockings (actually a pair of my hiking socks).  Incredibly, Santa Claus managed to track us down in Las Vegas, filling the girls' stockings with edible Guatemalan goodies.  We then spent a rather odd but fun Christmas Day - picking up some groceries for an unusual Christmas dinner, wandering around a few of the hotels and casinos on the strip, and relaxing in the outdoor pool and hot-tub (despite an outside temperature of about 10 degrees Celsius or 50 degrees Fahrenheit).

On Boxing Day, we woke up early for our dawn flight to Vancouver and I sent my stress level sky-rocketing when we tried to check in and I discovered that we'd left our passports in our hotel room safe.  A frantic taxi-ride back to the hotel, then back to the airport, and we got to our plane on time.  It seems as we get closer to the end of the trip that my brain is reaching its limit for processing organizational details and by the time we're back in Nelson I'll be capable of little more than crawling into bed and sleeping for a week.  Not quite there yet, however.  After a connecting flight from Vancouver to Victoria, we're now staying with Tanya's friend, MaryAnn, near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.  Home in a few days!

Back to Guatemala

From Iain: After spending a pleasant night at Hanna Stables near the border, we crossed back over into Guatemala on Thursday 20 December.  We stayed at Casa Amelia in Flores again, which was busier than it had been two weeks previously, due both to tourist season ramping up and the gathering of all manner of new age mystics for the "end of the world."  Mayan sites like Tikal and Caracol were allowing people to camp out overnight to communally experience the astronomical alignments signifying the ending of a particular major cycle in the Mayan calendar and the beginning of a new one (known as the 13th b'ak'tun). So, not so much the ending of the world as a kind of millennial new year's eve with some astronomical phenomena thrown in.

We made our way down to Poptun on the morning of the 21st, traveling in relative comfort in a remarkably laid-back microbus that wasn't crammed to the gunnels with people. They dropped us off at Finca Ixobel, a self-described hotel ecologico, where we stayed for two nights in a "deluxe treehouse," essentially a cabin on stilts. Bethany and Sierra were excited to have a large, furry tarantula camped out just beside our treehouse for the duration of our stay, and also to see the two large resident parrots.

Parrots at Finca Ixobel

Then on the 23rd we caught a 1st class Linea Dorada bus to Guatemala City, which proved to be less grueling than the reverse journey had been due to fewer delays and less extreme use of air conditioning, but perhaps also because we knew we were on our way home now.

Horseback trip to Xunantunich ruins

From Iain: On Tuesday we went on a horseback trip to the Xunantunich Mayan ruins with Hanna Stables.  We rode with our guide, Dominic, along forest, farm, and riverside trails, including a short hand-cranked ferry ride across the Mopan River.  Bethany and I were lucky enough to have super-responsive horses, but Tanya's and Sierra's were a little more independent-minded.  After a few attempts trying to get us all lined up, Dominic managed to get a photo of us all together:

Bethany, Iain, Tanya, and Sierra on horseback trip to Xunantunich

We reached the Mayan ruins at Xunantunich after a couple of hours and then spent about an hour wandering the site, the most impressive part of which is the Castillo.  In contrast to the ruins we saw at Tikal, there are well-preserved carvings visible at Xunantunich, which are very impressive:

Castillo at Xunantunich Mayan ruins

After another two hours riding back to the stables we were happy to dismount, cool off, and rest our weary bones.

Iguana Conservation Project

From Iain: After the cave tour, we went to the Iguana Conservation Project in San Ignacio.  Here they "grow" iguanas until they are about two years old, after which they release them into the wild.  Before they are released, the baby iguanas get to hang out on tourists' heads:

Is there something crawling on top of my head?

Cave tour by canoe

From Iain: On Monday we went on a tour to Barton Creek Cave, traveling about a kilometre and a half underground by canoe.  Sierra was a little nervous about going in a cave, but was reassured by the fact that we were traveling by canoe (rather than by foot or swimming or by inner-tube as in some of the other nearby caves).  Our guide, John, was also really good and deliberately toned down his descriptions of Mayan sacrificial rites in the caves so as not to overly alarm Sierra.  She ended up being so brave that once we'd gone as far as we could by canoe, we all jumped out of our canoes and into the water to do a little exploring by foot:

Tanya, Iain, Sierra, and Bethany in Barton Creek Cave

Apparently, Bethany and I came very close to putting our hands on a giant centipede while climbing up out of the water onto a part of the cave that wasn't submerged.  Although both Tanya and John saw the centipede they decided to keep quiet to avoid unnecessarily alarming us (and spooking Sierra who was just about to follow us).  We then all went for a brief swim (the water was a tad chilly so far underground) before heading back in the canoes.

Jungle lodge

From Iain: We've been staying in the jungle just north of San Ignacio for the past four days, at Parrot Nest Lodge.

Tanya, Sierra, and Bethany at Parrot Nest Lodge

The no-frills lodge is in a large patch of semi-cleared jungle and consists of about ten different-sized cabins and tree-houses, as well as a larger building housing a communal area for eating, reading, playing board games, etc., and the living quarters for the friendly family who run the place.

The jungle was, of course, hot and humid, but not unbearably so (it was even a trifle chilly early in the morning).  We didn't see or hear too much exotic wildlife during our stay, although we did see an agouti (like a giant guinea pig) hopping around and scores of fireflies winking on and off at dusk.  We also saw more than ten huge iguanas sunning themselves in the trees along the river when we went tubing.  Most of the iguanas we saw were orange males, some up to about four feet long, although we spotted a few less brightly coloured females too.  Tubing was great fun once Bethany, Sierra, and I, as first-timers, got the hang of steering.  There was one particularly exhilarating part where we dropped down a few feet through some narrow rapids, all of us somehow managing to stay upright on our inner-tubes.

We also went on a couple of tours during our stay here, a canoe trip to Barton Creek Cave, a visit to the Iguana Conservation Project in San Ignacio, and a horseback trip to the Mayan ruins at Xunantunich.

Snorkeling trip and nocturnal river tour

From Iain: Our week on the beach is coming to an end and we've had a great time - swimming, eating fresh coconuts, reading in hammocks, digging in the sand, generally chilling out in and around our cabana, and trying local Garifuna food.  [Garifuna people are descendants of Carib, Arawak, and West African people.]  We've also been on a couple of tours - a half day snorkeling trip to Belize's barrier reef and a two-hour boat trip along the Sittee River at dusk.  We went with Happy Go Luckie Tours for both trips and they were wonderful.

Getting back to our beach after snorkeling

For the snorkeling trip, Luckie and his boat mate picked us up right outside our cabin early on Wednesday morning.  We zoomed off to Bird Caye, about thirty minutes away, where we saw frigates and brown-footed boobies.  The male frigates were puffing up their red breasts to alarming proportions.  Then we made our way to South Water Caye, where we snorkeled first from the beach and then directly from the boat.  Luckie proved to be a great guide and was really good with the girls on their first time snorkeling.  They both managed just fine.  Visibility wasn't stellar and the fish were playing a little hard to get, but we still managed to see quite a few different types of fish, including lots of rays, which were the girls' favourite.

For the river tour yesterday evening, we met Luckie at the marina, a short taxi ride from town, and he patrolled us up and down the Sittee River as the sun set and for about two hours afterwards searching out wildlife.  We all had flashlights to help us spot things, but we were all pretty hopeless other than Luckie, who managed to locate all kinds of critters (all while driving the boat too).  We saw various birds, a two-foot long baby crocodile, bats, a moth almost as big as my hand, and even a giant spider (whose eyes Luckie spotted from a few hundred feet away).  The highlight of the tour was a stop in a large lagoon, where we shut off our flashlights.  The lagoon water at first just appeared inky black. but then as we circled and looked back at our wake we could see the water shimmering and shining with an iridescent turquoise-blue colour.  We then noticed streaks of the same bright colour darting and streaking past the boat, which Luckie said were fish trails.  He encouraged us to move our hands in the water and as we did so we were able to conjure up the streaks of shiny water for ourselves.  The colourful light we were seeing comes from bioluminescent plankton in the water, which produce the light in a similar way to fireflies.

To end our stay in Hopkins, this morning we spotted some dolphins while swimming and this afternoon the girls had an hour's drumming lesson with Jabbar (whose wife, Dorothy, manages the cabanas).

From Sierra: It was just me and daddy going swimming this morning, and as we swam further out we noticed what looked like large fish jumping.  But then we noticed that they had big fins and they were really dolphins.  They were so amazing and they were huge!

From Bethany: We learnt a few different rhythms on Garifuna drums made from mahogany with deer skin tied on with vines and some rubber bands acting like snares.  To make lower notes, you put your whole hand on the middle part of the drum and to make higher notes you put just your finger tips closer to the edge of the drum.

Hopkins beach, Belize

From Iain: We finished up our stay in Flores in style with a great meal at La Villa del Chef.  Then on Friday we caught a shuttle to the border with Belize.  Crossing the border was easy - a brief stop with Guatemalan Immigration to exit the country (which, for some reason, involved an unofficial 40 quetzal "fee") and then a short walk across the border to Belizean Immigration and Customs.  After five months of Spanish immersion, it was an abrupt change to hear English again (mixed in with some Spanish and quite a bit of Kriol, an odd-sounding, almost slang-like English variant).

After spending a night in San Ignacio at the very pleasant Western Guesthouse, we had another epic bus day, taking three separate buses to Belmopan, then Dangriga, and finally Hopkins, a small town on the coast.  And now we're spending a relaxing week at Lebeha Seaside Cabanas in a large, self-contained cabin right on the beach about 50 metres from the Carribean.  It's about as perfect as you could imagine and there are very few other people here so we've pretty much got the beach to ourselves.

Outside our cabin on the beach in Hopkins

The sea is ideal for swimming in - the water is warm, it's shallow for a long way out, and most of the time it's incredibly calm due to the reef just on the horizon.  And the air temperature is just right too - in the low 30s (Celsius) or high 80s (Fahrenheit).  Next up is a snorkeling trip out to the reef on Wednesday.

Attack of the amoebas

From Iain: To provide a complete account of our trip we should include the bad along with the good, so here's a brief account of our ongoing battles with amoebas while we've been away.  Despite our best attempts to avoid ingesting contaminated food or water, somewhere along the way we managed to pick up some microscopic parasitic amoebas.  We've all been sick from this at various times over the past few months, although not enough to seriously disrupt our trip.

While Tanya and Sierra managed to fight off the amoebas by themselves, Bethany and I haven't been so lucky.  While we were in San Antonio by Lake Atitlan, Bethany wasn't doing so well.  The people at the hotel where we were staying took us an American surgeon who lives nearby.  He referred us to a colleague at the hospital where he volunteers who specializes in intestinal problems.  He was able to prescribe medication for Bethany that seems to have done the trick.

I was fine until we got to Nebaj, when I went downhill quickly.  We managed to find a good doctor in town who tried to fix me up with various medications.  Although I felt a little better after a few days the stomach pains soon returned, so I returned to a second doctor for a round of alternative meds.  This managed to keep me going for a little longer, but when we got to Flores I started feeling rough again.  So, now I've seen a third doctor (in San Ignacio, Belize this time) and I'm on yet a new cocktail of meds (I think I've taken ten different drugs now).  Apparently part of the problem is that the meds I took previously were probably getting rid of the live amoebas but were not killing the eggs, so the cycle would just start over again after a few days (eeuw!).  Hopefully I'll be all good again soon.

While on this trip we've tried to take all the recommended precautions - drinking only purified water, avoiding uncooked salads in restaurants, etc.  As a result of our amoeba encounters we've even started to soak all our raw fruits and vegetables in a biocide solution.  But on a trip of this length in countries where the water is not safe for us to drink, it was always unlikely that we'd manage to make it through the entire six months scot-free.  A restaurant might generally use safe food handling techniques, but even a single drop of water on the dish they use to serve your food can make you sick.  Similarly, a juice bar might use purified water to make its smoothies, but the blender might be rinsed with plain old tap water in between uses.  Or, an avocado might seem perfectly safe to eat since only the inside flesh is eaten, but when you cut it in half you could transfer contaminants from the outside of the skin into the flesh.  And although the high-priced tourist restaurants might appear to have more stringent food safety standards than the cheaper local restaurants, that need not necessarily be the case.  Besides, trying out local restaurants is a part of our trip we don't want to miss out on.  All we can do is strive to reach a good balance between staying as safe as we can while also enjoying as many local food experiences as possible.

Flores and Tikal

From Iain: We left Antigua on Tuesday for an epic all-day journey to Flores in the north of Guatemala.  We took a shuttle from Antigua at 7:30 am, which got us to Guatemala City around 9 am.  We then caught the 10 am Linea Dorada "first class bus" to Flores - this bus was much like a regular old long distance coach with the air conditioning cranked to the max and the toilet barely functioning.  Traffic coming out of Guatemala City was dreadful and then there was an interminable section with endless road construction, so we ended up rolling into Flores about 3 hours late at around 9 pm.
After resting in Flores - a very pleasant town on a small island in a large lake - on Wednesday, we spent Thursday at Tikal National Park, which is to Mayan Guatemala as Machu Picchu is to Incan Peru.  The park is a vast area of jungle dotted with a wide variety of Mayan temples and other ruins.  Some of the ruins have been fully excavated and exposed, while others remain partially or fully covered in the jungle undergrowth that hid them from the world for hundreds of years until the mid to late 1800s.  One of the highlights of our visit was climbing to the top of the tallest temple-pyramid, Templo IV, where you can look out over the jungle canopy below you and see the tops of some of the other pyramids poking up above the tops of the trees.

View from the top of Templo IV, Tikal

This view is also famous for appearing in Star Wars (ep. IV).

While we were exploring the ruins, it was hard not to compare them with the Incan ruins we'd seen in Peru.  The Mayan ruins here are generally much older than, for example, those at Machu Picchu, and the stonework certainly looked and felt older.  It tended to be darker and more crumbly-looking and discoloured.  Tanya described the ruins as feeling more sinister and foreboding than those in Peru.  The style of the buildings is completely different too, for example, Templo I (Temple of the Great Jaguar):

Sierra and Bethany in front of Templo I, Tikal

Another fun aspect about Tikal was hiking along all the jungle trails between the clusters of ruins.  Since we were there from about 9 am to 2 pm, much of the jungle animal life was probably asleep, but we still managed to see quite a few interesting critters.  The cutest was a koatymundi, like a slimmed down raccoon with a pointy nose and a long striped tail.  We saw about seven or eight spider monkeys swinging through the trees and heard the ferocious sounds of howler monkeys (although we didn`t catch sight of any of these).  At one point while Sierra and I stopped to look up into a tree to see what we thought might be another spider monkey, a tarantula fell down from the tree branches onto the ground, missing Sierra's head by inches.  It spanned about four inches across and was furry and pale brown.  After I'd taken a photo of it while it remained motionless, Tanya chucked some leaves and a twig at it to see if it would move, and sure enough it did, running and jumping (!) away.  Finally, as we were waiting for the bus to take us back to Flores, we saw some iridescent occelated turkeys.

Koatymundi, spider monkey, tarantula, and occelated turkeys at Tikal.

Antigua coffee tour

From Iain: On Monday we went to La Azotea Cultural Center just outside Antigua for a tour of a working coffee finca (farm), along with museums covering coffee production and indigenous folkloric musical instruments, dress, and dances/festivals from all over Guatemala.  This was all done remarkably well with guides and signs in flawless English.  We got a pretty good insight into the coffee production process and had a pleasant stroll around the shade grown coffee plantation.  It is the beginning of harvest season just now, so this is what the coffee cherries look like.

Azotea coffee cherries ripe for the picking

If you pick one of the cherries and squeeze it, some sweet-tasting pulp comes out along with two coffee beans.  Once harvested  the beans are then fermented, sun-dried, and roasted, all on site.  The resulting coffee is pretty darn good - we all had a small sample after the tour and then bought a pound of dark roast beans to take home with us.
When we got back to Antigua we treated ourselves to an extravagant lunch at Rainbow Cafe.  I've never seen Bethany and Sierra eat so much food at one sitting before.

Chichicastenango market mayhem

From Iain: We left Nebaj yesterday so that we could spend Saturday night in Chichicastenango and then go to the famous Sunday market today.  To get here we first took a micro (public minibus) to Santa Cruz del Quiche, a rather uncomfortable journey of about two and a half hours.  It wasn't uncomfortable because of the crazy speed that we whipped round corners or bounced over speed bumps - although this was plenty crazy - but rather because of the insane number of people crammed into the vehicle.  Although it had seats for roughly 10 passengers, at times there were about 30 people crammed inside, so many that the guy who collected the fares and put luggage on the roof ended up spending part of the journey up on the roof himself.  We probably would have been better off in a chicken bus, so this is the option we took for the next part of the journey from Santa Cruz del Quiche to Chichicastenango, which thankfully was a mere half an hour trip.
We checked into a wonderful little guesthouse, Posada el Arco, where we had a large, nicely decorated room with a working fireplace and warm showers, both of which we made good use of.  We also enjoyed the extensive garden at the posada, with lots of exotic flowers and fruit trees (including lime, orange, and avocado).

Sierra and Bethany at Posada el Arco, Chichicastenango

We spent this morning at the Chichicastenango Sunday market, along with about a zillion other tourists and some locals.  This was quite a bracing change after Nebaj, where there were barely any tourists.  At times, it was a struggle to squeeze through the narrow gaps between stalls, thronged with a mass of tightly packed bodies gradually moving in one direction and then another.  Despite the hoards, we managed to successfully buy a few presents for people.  We were even able to bargain on all the things we bought.  After five months in places where nothing seems to have a fixed price, we're finally getting the hang of settling on a price well below the first price given.  We're probably still paying over the odds, but we figure that if we're paying a reasonable price for something, paying more than a local might really doesn't matter.
In the afternoon we took a private shuttle minibus to Antigua.  Although the vehicle we rode in was essentially identical to the vehicle we rode in between Nebaj and Santa Cruz del Quiche, the differences between a private shuttle and public micro are the price (about five times as much), the number of passengers (everyone gets their own seat), there is no stopping along the way to jam more passengers in, and the driver will stop if anyone needs to use the toilet.  However, both private shuttles and public micros drive at alarming speeds, so they have that in common.  We made it to Antigua safe and sound, so we're now snugly ensconced in our room at Posada Dona Luisa, where the girls are taking turns reading a story to each other.