After enjoying the Caribbean of Belize we head west. We cross the border to Guatemala. This Border process is seamless. We overstayed in Belize and were reasonably scared because we overstayed, luckily nobody seemed to care. You just pay the exit fee of 40 Belizean Dollars ~ approximately 20 Dollars and you’re good. I thought going to Mexico is easy enough. In Guatemala it was even easier. Usually there is a form or some questions you get asked before you enter a country. In this case the lady at the border just looked at me. Clank, and the stamp is in my passport. Same for Sally, a short look, clank the stamp is in. We look at each other in disbelief. We drive to Flores which is a city located on an island of a lake. From there you can see Tikal, another ancient Mayan City. Flores has some charm as well. It is a small island in a lake. The view is nice from every side, though the water is quite high.

We want to see Tikal early. So we get up at 4 in the morning and start heading towards Tikal. We get to the park at around 6. The jungle is slowly waking up and you can hear all sorts of animals around. From there we enter into the old city. Man this was definitely worth it! You see the jungle around the ruins. Often you look at a ‘hill’. But quite often this not a natural hill but a buried pyramid. Less then 10% are actually excavated. The rest is covered in jungle.

See the ‘hill’ on the right? That is no ordinary hill. This is a full blown pyramid. Around 45 meter high and meant to watch the sun solstices. From a few sides you won’t even notice. Isn’t that totally crazy? This is what 1000 years can do to human made structures. This is happening all over the place. Remember 90% is buried.

It is really hard to describe the scale of this place. It was a city that could probably hold around 500.000 to 2.000.000 inhabitants at some point. This is just an estimate. If there was a lower class that was not living in stone houses but in wooden huts it could even be more, but these are not well preserved. Tikal fell to problems we are currently very aware of. Overpopulation and overconsumption of the resources around let to deforestation and food problems. The Jungle you can see today was completely gone. A drought in combination with the poisoned reservoirs of water first led to wars and than later the abandonment of the city around 900 A.D. This is long before the Spanish arrived. So this place was lost and forgotten and a thick layer of jungle grew back on it until it was rediscovered. This is how we can see it today.

Truly a remarkable place! The best part, you can climb in the ruins yourself to get a picture of the size of it. So far my favorite Mayan Ruins. By the way these are not the only ones. In the whole area of Belize, Mexico Guatemala and El Salvador you can find dozens of ruins.

After an mind blowing morning we head back to Flores after this crazy experience. We spend the afternoon there. We find out there is a rope swing where you can chill on the lake so this is what we do. We are already tired and we need to catch a night bus in the evening. So we enjoy our brake by jumping into the lake and lazing in one of the provided hammocks

The night bus is freezing cold so we get little to no sleep at all. It just begs the question. Who the fuck is cranking the AC to the maximum. Do they do this on purpose? So after getting up at 4 am the day before and having almost no sleep in the bus we end up super exhausted in Antigua. The city itself is quite beautiful and surrounded by three volcanoes and is surrounded by numerous mountains. We want to climb the Acatenango volcano and the El Fuego. This is supposed to be the most active volcano of whole Guatemala. For this you have to wait for the next post. The old capital of Guatemala – Antigua is quite lovely. It has a colonial vibe and without knowing where you are you would believe to be in northern Italy or in Spain. Antigua is lying in an elevation of 1500m so it can get quite chilly at night.

Except for the locals they definitely look Guatemalan. Unfortunately Sally got sick so we have to postpone our plan for the volcano summit for later. We decide to stay two days and then head to the Beach of El Paredon Pura Vida. The temperature difference to Antigua is already noticeable from the bus. As we approach the beach we feel like we are in a sardine can. Finally I can go surfing again. We sleep in these lovely palm huts. At the beach it is just super hot all day and all night. If you expect a super white beach you are mistaken. Remember it is the land of the volcanoes so the beach filled with black sand. It get’s very hot during the day so be careful when you walk around barefoot!

I have seen this in Tenerife before and I absolutely love it. It looks like something went wrong in the design. It is a lovely place and we plan to spend Sally’s birthday here. For the celebration I want to teach her surfing. All goes well for thirty minutes, until Sally catches a wave, falls down and get’s out of the water. What she didn’t see, that her board was flying around. I tried to warn her but it’s too late… Shit. The board slams against her nose. First I thought she dodged it but when she comes out of the water again her nose is bleeding and she looks like she is in a lot of pain. Damnit this is not how I imagined her birthday to go. After ten minutes the bleeding stops. Luckily it didn’t cause more than a headache and a nosebleed. She was lucky this could have gone much worse. After this incident she leaves the surfing to myself.

Until next time! Stay tuned as we hike the summit El Fuego.