Monterrico

After our time in Tikal, I decided that I had to revise my travel plans a bit. Initially, I wanted to travel to Rio Dulce, and visit Livingston, a little town on the Caribbean. However, I was warned that the humidity was just as bad there as in Tikal, so instead I decided to hit Monterrico, a beautiful black sand beach a mere two hours away.

Which, it turns out, is just as humid. And midday, the sand is so hot that I literally burned my feet. Okay, so it wasn't the best thought-out plan ... but it was a good weekend all the same. We booked a shuttle for early Saturday morning, and it turns out the four of us were the only people in the van, which made for a relaxing trip. When we got to the end of the road, we were still a good twenty minutes away from Monterrico - by boat. A lovely river ride later, we arrived in the town and trekked the kilometer to the hotel. Because I had arranged EVERYTHING for Tikal, Jane and Leonor had taken on the responsibility for this trip. A great gesture, but apparently one that involved booking a painfully cheap, and disgustingly dirty, hotel. Which is bad in the best of times, but clean sheets are especially important when you're covered in sweat! Karina and I, the resident old folks, decided to find ourselves a slightly cleaner, and more expensive, option, and wound up choosing a hotel on the beach with A/C and a nice restaurant where we ate all of our meals.

The weekend was basically dedicated to lounging on the beach and napping in the shade (more of the latter for me, but the Norweigen ladies want to return home as dark as guatemaltecas, so ...). Saturday night, we paid a guide to walk down the beach for us looking for sea turtles, as it is currently prime egg-laying season. We trekked for a total of three hours, and in fact didn't find the turtle until we had almost returned to the hotel, and then it was raining ... but it was still a magnificent sight! I felt a bit bad for the turtle, surrounded by people with cameras and flashlights, but she made it back to the ocean just fine (the guide made sure she'd layed and covered her eggs before he let us approach). Also cool - the sand was alight with some weird phosphoresance that sparkled wherever we walked, which was almost enough to entertain me during our THREE HOURS of walking. (Yes, I'm a bit bitter about that - three hours is a long time generally, but in SAND?!?)

Other than the turtle, nothing much happened - unless you count the drunk guy in the tienda (store) who tried to grab my arm. (I do know how to say "If you touch me, I'll break your arm" in Spanish, but I wasn't able to say it on the spot - guess that means I need more practice!) But it was a nice, relaxing (albeit humid) weekend out of the city, which is just what I needed after my first week with 30 hours of lessons!