Tikal

So all my Bergman family vacations definitely helped me prepare for this trip, we were picked up at our house at 4:15 on Saturday morning to drive to Guatemala City to catch our 45 minute flight to Flores, where we then drove about an hour to Tikal.

First I’m going to back up a bit.  As we were driving to the airport our driver took a few wrong turns, and when we turned into the airport Leah goes, “I definitely don’t think this is right.”  Well, it was.  The airport looked a little sketchy at 5:00 in the morning because it was a very small domestic airport.  We checked in which consisted of all of us stepping on a scale to be weighed to make sure that the plane could hold all our weight, not going through security, and just walking through without anyone caring what was in our bags.  Not everyone fit on one plane so a few of us ended up going on the bigger plane.  It held 33 people!  Sydney and I thought it was funny that we were in the last row, and it was row 11!  After we took off we were served crackers and juice, and by the time the flight attendant picked up our trash, we were landing! 

When we got to the airport we waited for a van to take us to Tikal.  When we got there we walked around the ruins for several hours with a tour guide.  The first temple we got to we were able to climb, and although I’m not too fond of heights, I didn’t give myself an option.  I made myself start climbing the stairs, which was more like a never ending ladder, before I could change my mind.  The view from the top was awesome; however, I think I would’ve liked it even better had there been a railing.  I was scared to move because I thought I might slip and fall to my death.  I jumped at the first opportunity to climb back down, and my legs were shaking the entire way; however, I did it!

I climbed to the top of this one!

Leah and I

We walked around to several more temples and other ruins, before running into one of my favorite parts of the weekend, wild MONKEYS!  They were so cute!  I may have taken more pictures during the 10 minutes we were watching them, than the rest of the four hours we were at Tikal!  That’s only a slight exaggeration. 

After we saw the monkeys we went to the last temple.  We climbed a ton of stairs, which were actually more like stairs, to the top of an amazing view of the area.  There still wasn’t a railing, but this one seemed less scary than the first because the entire temple wasn’t excavated.  Instead of looking straight down to my death, I saw the tops of trees which would provide a lot more cushion if I fell. 

After that we finally got to eat lunch, at 3:30 after being up since 3:45.  Thankfully Leah and I planned ahead and brought some snacks with us.  Then we drove to where we were staying for the night on the Island of Flores.  We walked into our room and the first thing we saw was an amazing view of the lake with the sun starting to set.

The view from our hotel room.

Leah and I walked around some before eating supper as a group.  Then when we got back we were all exhausted so we started getting ready for bed shortly after returning.  As I’m in my bed getting ready to sleep, I hear “Greta!  Greta!”  It was Leah calling me from her balcony next door.  She wanted to figure out our plans for the next day.  Even when she’s not stuck rooming with me, she still wants to hang out with me.  She’s wonderful.

The next day we walked around for a while to find a place to eat breakfast, and we walked around the island some more.  Then we packed up our stuff and then went to eat lunch as a group.  We ate at this restaurant and Leah and I shared a small pizza and some tostadas with guacamole.  Side note –another great thing about Leah is that she loves to share stuff with me when we go to restaurants like nachos or pizza, or we both order something different and we get to try 2 things.

Then we drove back to the airport, and there was slightly more security this time.  We had to check scissors and things like that, and we also went through security.  We actually ended up leaving about 45 minutes early.  I’ve never heard of that happening before, ever!  We got even more snacks on the way home!  We each got a whole can of pop, chips, and crackers.  Then the flight attendant came by and asked if we wanted anything else! 

By the way, one of the greatest things about the plane was the fact that we got to walk up the steps to get on and off the plane!

Syd and I!

We got back to Antigua around 7:30 and ate at Pizza Mia as a group.  Another SI staff was already there and had everything ordered so it was all ready when we got there.  It was so nice not to have to wait for our food because we were all super tired.  (My mom always laughs at me because she says I’m always telling her about food, and in this post I realized how much I really do talk about food.)  Leah and I walked home and went to bed as soon as we could after getting home, which was still later than I would have liked.

It was a great weekend before the final push of our last week of language school.  I have 4 days left of language school before our spring break!

Wow!  That got extremely long.  I commend you if you actually read all of that.  I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have.