Our last day in Belize and it was 'admin day', emails to answer, hotels to book, transport to organise, but lots of hanging out on Burns Avenue, with ice cold cokes or beers, and food. Then back to pack and prepare ourselves for the next leg of the trip.
We have been spoiling ourselves when it comes to getting from place to place, and this time was no different. Instead of dealing with public transport and lugging our many bags around, we opted again for the private shuttle, basically a taxi, right from the gate of the farm to our hotel, at Tikal in Guatemala. More expensive, but faster, easier and a lot more comfortable. We travelled with Max to the border, got our stamps, paid our departure fee, and transferred our belongings to a new car and driver on the other side. Immediately, everything was different. First off, of course, we were now in a Spanish speaking country, but other things too were noticeable. Houses, buildings, the people - it all looked very different. We left at 7.20 in the morning and got to the hotel at around 10.30. We have a gorgeous grass-roofed cabin, with a little terrace, by the pool. After a rest and second breakfast, we decided to take a walk into the site to see some of the ruins and test how manageable it is with the stroller, in preparation for our guided sunset tour later. Tikal is huge. Our walk took us a good 90 minutes and we saw only a small fraction of what's there. We quickly decided that the stroller was too much hard work, and headed back for a quick swim before our tour.
By chance, we were the only ones taking the tour that evening. What luck! We had the guide, Eddy, to ourselves for the three and a half hours. This meant we could stop when needed to rest or exchange baby-carrying duties. We climbed the tallest structure and looked out over the jungle to see the tops of other pyramids peeking out from above the trees. We saw all kinds of animals from monkeys, foxes, insects, birds, and all the other strange four legged animals that live here. Even a dangerous snake, a Fer-de-lance. We were on the north acropolis for sunset and were the only people the park. It really was amazing. We came back for our dinner, chatted to the staff and some guests and were fast asleep by 9! Worn out from our exciting day. Dan was heading out again at 4 am for the sunrise tour, but we decided Anu had had enough of ruins for a while, so he was heading off on this adventure without us.