Ahh this is a soo lobely!

The view from the top, you can see Temple 1
The view from the top of the "Stairs"! I wasn't up here for long, the height was too scary for me...

The view from the bottom!

Chuck and I in front of Temple 1

The famous Temple 1 from on top of Temple 2

Borris our animated tour guide telling us about the human sacrifices performed on this rock! They didn't chop their heads off, only druged them with mushrooms and cut out their hearts while still alive!

Standing on top of one of the ruins. One of the many great views of Tikal.

Charles holding the taranchula! Guiding it up his arm!

The poor litte Chiwawa all by itself in the middle of the Flores airport.

Charles and I getting on the plane to Flores!

TIKAL!!! What more can I say?! This place was definitely a great wonder of the world. We decided to take a plane to Flores... a last minute decision which I think saved us a good amount of sleep deprivation, but then that changed when we took an overnight bus from Flores to the capital... more about that later.

Flores was about 1 and 15min from Tikal. It is a small little town in the center of a lake. It was a very quiet, cute little town, almost too quiet. We stayed in a pretty cool hostel. We met people from all around the world staying there. You had the option of renting hammocks, communal rooms or little tree houses. There was no hot water, but it was so humid there it wasn't needed. They had a restaurant and travel agency within our hostel which was definitely a bonus.

We arrived at the Flores airport and while we were getting our luggage we both couldn't help but notice a little chiwawa on top of all the luggage. We watched how everyone grabbed their belongings and eventually the poor guy was left in the middle of the airport, in his little carrying case. Probably one of the funniest/cutest things. So we took a picture :)

We found out that if you went to the park after 3 pm your ticket was still valid for the next day. So we took a little bus at 3 pm to the park and walked around the main square of Tikal until 5:30. It was definitely amazing! There were no people around so we were able to explore without all the tourists and take pictures without people in the background. However, on our way back to the parking lot we got lost! We both were freaking out, Charles thought we would be sleeping in the jungle and I thought we would never get back to our hostel and the whole trip was going to be ruined! Well... we made it out... in pitch black darkness. We "enjoyed" a nice bus ride back with an angry French couple and we found out later we almost ran over boa contrictors :) But our driver was pretty awesome. We were pretty sure he knew everyone in town. He reminded me of a taller, grey-haired Danny Divito who spoke Spanish and needed to pull up his pants every 5 minutes... and probably shower.

The next day we got up really early for our guided tour of Tikal. We had a young, dynamic, tour guide named Borris. He like to call us "Mis Chavos" or "My friends" and every time he talked it was full of animation and full of information, so much sometimes I just stopped listening and enjoyed watching him get so into his explanation. He was great. We were able to climb almost every ruin and we definitely took tons of pictures. One of the first things we saw on our tour was a taranchula! It was pretty nasty... and Charles and I held it! This of course after it took a dump on one of the Australian tourists. It was definitely a beautiful experience (not the spider, Tikal), one I know we both will never forget.

Later that night we took an overnight bus ride to Guate. This bus was so small, it was small for me, imagine how uncomfortable it was for Charles!! There was no way to get comfortable. Needless to say we were both slap happy during our 7 hour ride. At different points during the trip I would wake up to Charles pointing out the window because the bus stopped and it appeared as though they were loading illegal cargo onto the bus due to random people running to and from the bus to a nearby alley. Then I woke up half asleep to turn my head and find myself face to face with a man sitting on a stool in the middle of the aisle. Charles later told me he ended up laying newspapers on the floor and fell asleep. We got off at a sketchy bus stop in Guatemala City... where people were sprawled out on the floor or couch dead asleep, nasty bathrooms and dirty old men. The shuttle was late, but it came... and took us to Antigua where we took another shuttle (after I made everyone late by getting coffee... the bus driver was none too thrilled with me and on top of that no one opended the windows! it was so hot on that bus!) to the lake. Our 12 hour trip definitely made us really cranky and poor Charles ended up getting sick. Good thing we were at the lake for 3 days...so we took a much needed day off the first day we were at the lake.