Guatemalan Rainstorms are no respecters of laundry. More on this later.
That lovely feeling of anonymity granted me by San Ignacio is gone. I sit back in the shade of the building and wait for Dom to emerge. About ten steps from the door entering our new territory we are accosted by a taxi driver asking us to ride with him.
Dom and I do enough deliberating that the driver lowers the price a bit and we go for it. He drives a new enough Montero and cruises us along with intermittent English and weird music. Dom tells me about a cave he went to in Guatemala where they sell candles and send you on your way. Listening to his description of swimming underneath a mountain in near total blackness, with just a candle held out of the water, pressing deeper through the caves on nothing but prayer is intoxicating.
An hour or so later, I am disembarking the vehicle in the middle of Guatemala at a jungle of a guest house where no one appears to be at home. Dom and I exchange our goodbyes and he leaves… with my rechargeable batteries.
Dom, if you are reading this. I’ll be in Antigua soon, so you can come drop them off to me.
The hostel is fantastic looking, and ultra rustic. But with only marginal mosquito protection, I’m a little hesitant. I decide to take a walk in to town and see what else is going on. There is an American with a great looking dual sport 250 chilling on the side of the road. He is informative but by no means friendly, so I keep on rolling.
The next hotel is unattended, so I land at the Sun Breeze Inn. Hardly an Inn, really just a fantastic old house with a courtyard run by a splendid gentleman named Humberto, who has absolutely no interest in speaking English. Perfect.
I really feel like my Spanish speaking abilities are in full effect after I negotiate the room, a ride to Tikal, and some food recommendations nearby. The room has sufficient screens, a mosquito net, and a startling beautiful view of the lake behind the house.
Today is filled with motorcycles. After a good 2 kilometer walk, and a fantastic chat with an Australian woman named Moonwhisper, followed by an attempted chat with a Taiwanese co-op farmer, I find myself at a French restaurant that really looks like any thatched roof bamboo hut in central America. The fare is reasonably priced, but no one is in attendance. Just another American from Washington in the corner who tells me he just rode down here in his Kawi 650 dual sport. Yes. From Washington.
Eventually the owner shows up and brings me some delicious food for a price that would be criminal in the USA. Jay, the Kawasaki king pulls up at a table that would seat Genghis Khan’s hordes and orders his food as they are clearing my empty plates. We chat a bit about adventures, just enough to convince me I need to immediately buy a dual sport bike and go travel the world when I finally realize the sun is long down and there are no street lights in the middle of Guatemala. Being the Eagle Scout that I am, I am glad that I brought a flashlight. Flashlight or no, a horse snorting next to me in the dark scared the bejeebus out of me on the way back.
Fireflies are nearly great. In Guatemala they seem to have a marginally red tint to them. Orange perhaps. About a half kilometer from the Sun Breeze I become aware of lights in the fields. Making a possibly questionable call for the middle of the Guatemalan country street, I shut off my flashlight and just chill out for a while watching the fireflies. It’s nice, but I have to get up early, so it doesn’t last long.
New life lesson learned: always check the bed before paying the hotel. The bed I have chosen is little more than a boxspring. The other bed in the room is even more uncomfortable. So I fold the blanket up underneath me as best as I can and situate the mosquito net and go to sleep, such as it is.
I sleep fitfully. The time between 3:15 and 4:30 when I finally get up is characterized by an agonizing slowness and about 50 half awake looks at the clock. Yuck.
I make the bus on time and we pick up Jay on the way, among others. He doesn’t notice me, so I say nothing. My mission for Tikal is to see the sunrise from the top of Temple 4. As soon as they unload the bus, I dodge into the restaurant, grab a cup of coffee to go and take off for the temple. About half of the coffee spills before I am halfway to the ticket booth. The disparity between locals and tourists is spelled out in black and white on the board over the ticket booth. Nacionales: 50Q. Extrajanes: 150Q.
This is the same everywhere. At the very least I will pay 3x as much as a Guatemalan for anything. Ah well… such is the life of the invader.
Jay catches up to me at the map and we take off in search of Temple 4. We are walking nearly as fast as can still be considered walking. When we finally reach our destination, a walk of a couple kilometers, the climb is outrageous and we take it just as quickly. The heights are dizzying and my lack of oxygen from the climb makes me a little wary of being too near the edge at first.
There is fog everywhere. There is no sun. There is no sky. It is still brilliant.
Finally we descend and go off in search of new sights. The day is not simple. The park is huge and the trails are poorly marked, if at all. But the walks are rewarding and the temples are gargantuan. El Mundo Perdido; The Lost World. The Gran Plaza. Temples by every number.
Whenever I am under a tree it is raining on me. Whenever I emerge from under the canopy, there is no rain. The humidity and mists are so high, that it truly rains only in the forest; I suppose that’s why they call it a rainforest.
I sit on top of the Gran Plaza and write a couple postcards and think and write and think. It’s comforting to be inspired and surrounded by the work of dead people. Makes one think that I might be able to do something inspiring to others one day. Though, perhaps a little smaller.
Jay has taken off in search of something, so I wander and eventually find myself at temple 5. I’ve been looking for it for part of the day, since I didn’t buy the 25Q map they were selling at the door. Perhaps that has something to do with the horrible signage. Temple 5 is massive; it goes up and up and up and up. The climb is dauting, though luckily not nearly as fast as Temple 4, since some local guy is taking his 4 children (all under 10 years of age) up the Temple. Picture the Empire State Building, then add a wooden ladder that runs up the outside. That is basically what we are on.
The view from the top makes it all worth it. I’m amazed to see more people smoking at the top of the temple. I think forcing people to climb even one of these temples would be an effective quit smoking program. I need to leave. Lucky me, I get stuck behind the man and his children again on the way down.
Jay and I compare notes on the way back. He says a tour guide bribed a grounds worker and took him back to see some things that weren’t open to the public. I say I think that’s pretty cool, but probably wouldn’t attempt it myself since every park guard has an M-16 or a shotgun with him at all times. We make plans to meet up for dinner and talk about bikes and traveling and I get out at the hotel.
That’s it? You may ask… That’s all of the famed Tikal? Honestly, it is amazing and giant and formidable and inspiring and involves many kilometers of walking. But you really need to see it to believe it.
When I get back to the SunBreeze I still have a few hours before sundown and a ton of dirty clothes. Humberto, the owner is an agreeable sort, so I ask him.
‘Es possible puedo llavar mis ropas in el lago?’
“Claro, que si!”
“Donde puedo comprar jabon?”
‘En la tienda,’ he says pointing out the window at the store.
Next door, I can’t remember the word for soap again. This sort of thing happens a lot. The lady is helpful enough and soon I have an odd blue spheroid of soap and a bunch of dirty clothes and am on my way to the lake behind the hotel.
The local ladies think I am a trip. I ask them if it is ok if I do my laundry nearby on some washing and drying stones, and they agree mostly out of shock. I don’t think a lot of men do laundry here, and the town is pretty small. Despite El Remate’s proximity to something as famous as Tikal, it still has a wonderfully small town mentality. I sort of stare at some of the women as they do their washing to get a grip on what to do. The younger one asks her mom why I am staring at them. I can’t really hear her response, but it still makes me grin. I’m probably using too much soap. I just wash my board shorts while they are still on me and go for a swim to rinse them out. Laying the clothes out on the line, I put on what little dry clothing I have and don a wet shirt in hopes that it will dry out while I am going to get food.
There is a possible delicious Italian restaurant on the road out of town, which I may never know because it was twice as expensive as the French place down the road, so Jay and I head back over there to eat and drink and discuss the nature of our findings today; archeologists that we are.
We really know nothing, but Jay does know that the dots and slashes on the inscriptions are dates in Mayan. They are either 1’s or 5’s or 10’s according to Jay, as they used a base 20 counting system since they generally had 20 digits… fingers and toes.
It’s dark outside. Quite dark, and I forgot my flashlight at Sun Breeze. Looks like a dark walk tonight. Truly the only danger is stepping in some of the gifts from the horses that are scattered around the road.
None of my clothes are completely dry, but I think they will be by morning. That is, until I am awakened by the violent rapping of the rainstorm of the metal roof above. Oops.
Picture me in a pair of boxers, trying to fight my way out of a mosquito net, unbolt a foreign door and storm out into a cobblestone courtyard in a rainstorm and a completely black night to start fighting clothes pins for possession of my rapidly soaked clothing.
Adventures aside, the night doesn’t give me anything more restful than the night before. The shuttle to Lanquin comes at 8:30 in the morning. It’s about 7:30 so I have time. Just in case, a lesson learned hard on my flights in recent history, I check the ticket Humberto gave me two days ago.
8:10 departure.
Oh. Wet clothes. 30 minutes to pack and leave. Super. Somehow all my clothes are dry except for socks, a pair of shorts, 2 pair of boxers, a shirt, and my board shorts. I can work with this. I put on a wet pair of boxers, wet shorts, and wet shirt, then I pack everything except for my drawstring backpack and the remaining wet clothes.
I make the shuttle and I am the first person on it. Taking advantage of nature mixed with the internal combustion engine, I open a window at the back of the shuttle and use the wind from the drive to Flores to dry the remaining boxers. We pick up some folks on the way. Again, the Guatemalan women have no idea what to do with me.
Luckily, by the time we get to Flores, the boxers are dry and all I have left are 6 socks, and my board shorts. Oh, and all the clothes I have on.
My shuttle-mates get to watch me drying my socks out the window for the remaining 6 hours to Coban. Our wild careening life threatening shuttle with my wet socks flying as a flag from the window. Heh.
Luckily, everything was dry by the time we got to Lanquin. I have no shame.