| Well it is exciting to be able to provide this update while sitting on the couch of our apartment in Antigua, Guatemala! So a lot has happened and come together in the last two weeks!
It was very exciting to have Chris join Mike and I in the Miami Airport on December 20! Chris brought new excitement and energy to the trip; which were welcome not only after backpacking for 7 weeks, but also after an overnight flight with little sleep! We had an interesting flight from Miami to Guatemala City! We were supposed to leave at 9:50 but originally had a slight delay of 20 minutes or so. I saw originally because we had an “irate” passenger on board as we were sitting in line to take off. So…the plane had to return to the gate and the irate passenger and his wife were removed from the plane by 6 police officers! Since we were originally delayed and had to taxi back to the runway again, the plane needed to refuel and the bags of the removed passengers had to be located before we could take off!!! So we finally got in the air around 11:40; which was 10 minutes after we were originally supposed to arrive in Guatemala City! But we eventually arrived safely!
After walking out of the airport, we had no plan of what to do for the afternoon! So we found a curb to sit down on while we ate some delicious Christmas cookies sent along by the Klassen family! We grabbed a taxi to the downtown area where we wandered around for a while. Then we headed to the bus station to buy tickets for an overnight bus to Santa Elena. We arrived in Santa Elena at 5:30 the next morning, found a hotel for the coming night and to drop off our bags and headed off in a shuttle to Tikal! Tikal is gorgeous! A very different experience from Machu Picchu as the ruins are immersed in jungle and spread out over a large area. We spent a good 7 hours hiking around Tikal before catching the last shuttle from the ruins back to the Island of Flores just off of Santa Elena where we spent the night! We were definitely tired by this point after having an overnight flight with little sleep, an overnight bus with little sleep, and a day of hiking around Tikal trying to take in all that the site had to offer in one day!
December 22 we headed to Coban where we spent the night before heading to Semuc Champey on the 23rd. Semuc Champey is a beautiful area that has a 300m long natural limestone bridge that tops a rushing river. The bridge is stepped and has it’s own set of pools filled with clean refreshing water as the pools all slowly drain to the next pool below! If you start at the top end of the bridge, you can dive from one pool into the next as you work your way down the bridge! We had limited time there so we chose one pool to swim in! We hadn’t organized a tour to get there because we wanted to save some money. So we got to Lanquin from Coban from where we jumped on the back of a truck heading to Semuc Champey for 15 Quetzals per person ($1 = roughly 8Q). It was 11 kms from Lanquin to Semuc Champey and we landed up walking the 11 kms back to Lanquin to catch a shuttle back to Coban for the night.
December 24 we headed off to Antigua and this is where I’ll stop and start a new post! We need to eat some lunch before our first spanish class this afternoon so I will post about Antigua later! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Years to all!!!!
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