First day in Peten, a gorgeous island right next to Flores, Guatamala. In the morning we marched off to scavenge for some tacos and once tacos were found we found a little boat with a lovely lady to take us across the lake to a rope swing. We met a ton of dutch people there, so I got to practice some of my dutch which mostly consisted of me yelling, “haagelslaag” and “pannekoek” while people jumped off the diving board and rope swing.
After lounging at the rope swing we put our tourist hats on and headed out to Tikal, one of the largest Mayan cities that exist. At first I thought our tour guide, Cesar, was wasted but we quickly found out that’s just kind of how he is. He did an amazing job explaining the ruins to us and went into a lot of depth explaining things. You can tell he was very cultured and lived in a lot of places.
The ruins were located pretty deep in the jungle so we got to see a lot of jungles. There were many times where I was much more interested in the plants and animals around than the ruins. The whole time we could hear howler monkeys screaming off in the background and we saw a few toucans which are an absolutely gorgeous bird. The birds would fly off before you could get close to them.
Seeing the ruins was an amazing experience. You can really feel what it might have been like to live here back in their time. At times it really felt like The Jungle Book, especially with all the wildlife around and in the ruins.
