Lo again,

Much has happened since our last post and we now find ourselves in Antigua, Guatemala, after stops in El Remate and Río Dulce along the way.

The border crossing from Belize proved very expensive: a taxi from the border town to the border $5; Belize departure tax $18.75 each; Guatemala entry tax $1.50 each; minibus to El Remate $15 each; money lost in using border money changers instead of banks (pretty much the only way you can do it) $5. To be honest, we were just glad to get away from the money grabbing hustlers in Belize.

On arrival at El Remate, a village on the shores of Lago Petén Itzá and our base for visiting the Mayan ruins at Tikal, we were dropped off at our campsite where we would get our first chance to use our new hammock - $3 pppn, not too shabby. It turned out that living in a tree right next to the palapa in which we were staying was a very loud howler monkey, that enjoyed waking us up every morning at 4am with a barking match against the dogs that lived on the campsite. The dogs tended to win. After the first night we caught a minibus at 5:30am to Tikal, but with a complete absence of ATMs since the border, had just enough cash for entry, lunch and a drink... or so we thought. After an overpriced breakfast and overpriced entry fee (which was apparently trebled later that day by the Government), we were left with enough for a couple of drinks to last us until the minibus picked us up at 2pm. Tikal itself was spectacular. A huge Mayan site set in dense jungle full of monkeys and various other wildlife, with several of the temples reaching up above the high treetops to give views of the tops of other temples peering out from the jungle. We climbed about a hundred of these. On our second night, the hammock fell down on the concrete floor in a comedy fashion while we were asleep. It hurt.

The next day we caught a bus to Santa Elena, and then another onto Río Dulce village on the edge of Lago de Izabal. We spent one night in a hotel that turned out to be a centre of bustling activity from 5am - we weren't particulary impressed (I'd been feeling a bit poo and we'd not had any sleep for three days courtesy of the howler monkey) and checked out to move onto somewhere remote along the river. We ended up in a jungle lodge, 10 minutes downstream, which was cheaper and probably our nicest accommodation so far. We took a boat tour down the river to Lívingston and saw various stuff, mostly tourists. There was a cat. We went home.

Yesterday we mooched on down to Guatemala City, where we were rushed onto a Chicken Bus to Antigua. Our bags were on the roof for the 2 hour journey, it rained quite a lot. We managed to get what seemed like the last free room in Antigua for the night and moved somewhere nicer this morning. We like Antigua, few too many Americans though.

We're off to climb the active Volcán Pacaya tomorrow at sunset, we'll let you know if we're killed by an unexpected erruption (or the authorities will anyway).

Bye for now,
Nick & Vic
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