Leaving Guatemala

Our window at Pasaj-Cap

Music at Del Lago

Fire Ceremony Pasaj-Cap

We spent our last few days in Guatemala in El Remate.  It is a beautiful village on the edge of Lake Peten Itza, halfway between Flores and Tikal.  Our hotel, Casa Ernesto, is nestled in the jungle, and the lake is across the road.  We watched an incredible sunset and dipped our feet in the cool lake, as the symphony of voices rose as the sun went down.  Frogs, crickets, birds, even some howler monkeys created a swelling chorus.  Above, the almost half moon lined up with Jupiter and Venus.  Did you see that where you are?  Take a look in the western sky after sunset.

Lake Peten Itza, El Remate

El Remate is in the jungle lowlands in the northeast part of Guatemala.  When the sun sets, the banks of clouds look like mountains of white, blue, pink, orange and purple.  The lake is calm, ducks swimming nearby.  Our host Ernesto is out fishing for the Pescado Blanco found only here in Peten and parts of Mexico.  We ate his fish twice while we were here, absolutely delicious, fried with garlic!

Last night we celebrated the end of our time in Guatemala with a special dinner at a restaurant just down the road, called Las Orquideas.  An Italian menu, we had really good pizza (unusual in Guatemala, most of the pizza and cheese is boring), a big salad, wine, dessert (gelato with chocolate y crema) and good coffee.  Probably our most expensive meal in Guatemala, it was under $40.

Tikal Temple at sunrise

I have loved our time in Peten.  We visited the Mayan ruins in Tikal, a national park in the jungle.  The Tikal site itself is huge, you could walk more than 10 km to cover it, and we spent close to seven hours there, from 6:30 am to 2 pm.  At the site of the Seven Temples, both Amy and I lay back on the steps of one of the temples, and fell asleep for a half hour.  Imagine – sleeping with the Mayan kings!  The ruins are hundreds of feet tall and awesome, and the jungle life is teeming with bird sounds and sights, pizotes (like small raccoons), ocelated turkeys (they look like a mix of turkey and peacock, absolutely beautiful), monkeys (I heard them but didn’t see any), and other life forms.  The trees are remarkable too, and when we climbed above them at Templo IV, we could see over the whole site, with ruins popping through the trees in many directions.  Amazing!

On top of Templo IV, Tikal

I swam in the lake twice, warmer than Atitlan (probably cleaner too!).  Our cabin in the woods was private, in a beautiful spot with hammocks on the porch.  Despite what I have heard, there were few mosquitos, no problem this time of year.  We did see a big scorpion crawling on the porch under my hammock, and of course lots of spiders and such.  The weather was fine, very quickly changing, from sunny to suddenly cloudy and windy to rain to mist in the morning.  When the sun is out it gets quite hot, and I can only imagine the temperatures and humidity during the hot rainy season around May – June.

So now we’ve taken the bus into Belize, saying goodbye (for now) to the wonderful Guatemala.  We arrived in San Ignacio, just a few minutes over the border, and booked a room for the night.  We spent the afternoon with Sarah, the sister of our Phil’s partner Karen, and we had a wonderful lunch together, and then went on a tour of the twin towns of San Ignacio and Santa Elena, where Sarah lives.  The countryside is beautiful, with two rivers snaking through the region.  There is a big river canoe race happening in a week or so, where more than a hundred canoes paddle for four days down the river from here to Belize City.  We will spend the evening with Sarah as well, have dinner, and get ready for our trip to the ocean and diving tomorrow.