Peten

So there's a bit more going on in the region of Peten than just Tikal ... but not much. The next morning, a couple people wanted to go to the "beach" (we were on a lake, so technically yes, but the horses and pigs were quite a deterrent for me ...), and the rest of us headed out to a nature reserve. It was a 30 minute walk in the humidity each way, then a few hours wandering around the reserve. Mainly, it was a combination of a really hard workout and a waste of time -- I tried to explain to my friends that it's quite difficult to see wild animals in reserves, especially for groups of six people loudly talking and crashing through the bushes, but they were sure that, since the brochure showed pictures of cute fuzzy creatures, we would be able to take pictures of cute fuzzy creatures.

They were wrong. The closest we got was cute trees, and they weren't even fuzzy ... there were a TON of butterflies, giant and beautiful, but they rarely stayed still long enough for us to take our pictures ... especially when people didn't have the foresight to turn off the artificial shutter noise on their cameras!!

After our grueling death march, we returned to the hotel for yet another round of showers and some refreshing coffee licuados. (My FAVORITE thing about Guatemala is that every restaurant and cafe offers licuados, which is a blend of fruit with water, milk or yogurt ... and some places offer interesting derivations as well.) At two on the dot, we clambered into our "private" shuttle and headed back to Antigua. It wasn't as private as we'd hoped - we thought we'd have space to spread out more, but the driver had brought along a back-up driver. Which makes sense, because it's 10 hours or so in each direction. But he had also brought along his daughter, and his daughter's 3-4 month old baby. The baby sat in her mother's lap in the front seat for the whole drive, which was a bit worrying (I guess they don't have car seats here), and a bit reassuring (I'm sure grandpa drove VERY CAREFULLY), but was admirably quiet and well behaved. And not smelly.

The trip took longer than expected - it was the night before Independence Day, and there's a cool tradition here where people run down the roads with torches, followed by packs of supporters in slow-moving vehicles. Very beautiful, unless you're in the midst of an already-too-long drive. We passed about 50 of them! :) And then, about 50 km from home, the highway was closed for construction. Not narrowed to one lane, just closed. And we weren't given the opportunity to detour, we just parked on the highway for 45 minutes.

I obviously got home eventually, of course. And we even eventually got some of our money back from the travel agency for the bus snafu, although that took some smooth (albeit grammatically incorrect) talking on my part. So all in all, a successful trip. Although I don't think I ever want to be a tour guide.