Day 3 in Tikal/Flores

Day 3, December 29th...

Today was the extra-curricular day! We did two things I’ve always wanted to do in a rainforest. A Skyline walk and a Canopy Zip-line! We went to a place called Ixpanpajul (Eesh-pawn-pa-hool) to do all that cool stuff.  It was another place where when paying I wasn’t allowed to speak English and did my best to fake I knew Spanish. I stuck to the phrases I know like “Donde esta el bano” (where is the bathroom), “Me gusta helado” (I like icecream), “Quiero agua”, (I want water), etc. 

Our Skyline walk was 2 and a half miles of up and up and bridges and up and up! Luis and I were pretty tired by midpoint. How convenient that the lookout point had hammocks!! We hung around there for about 20 minutes enjoying the sounds and sights of Guatemalan rainforest. There was this loud roaring that we thought sounded like a large cat but it was only a parrot! A macaw parrot we were told. Also we looked one way and we saw the Island Flores and where we were staying and to the other side we saw where Tikal and the pyramids were. It was amazing to be able to see so far. Guatemala City and the.area around there is surrounded by mountains. And while gorgeous you can’t see very far. Flores and the area around there is completely flat so you can see for miles if you are up high enough! On one of the bridges we saw two monkeys, another toucan, and more birds. Such a gorgeous trip.

The hammock at the lookout point half-way!

The monkey we saw while on the bridges.. Can you see his face?

The view from the bridges, gorgeous!

Us in our harness get-up before we do the zip line!

After the walk we then did the zip line! It was 8 platforms and we had to climb two of them. So much fun! We didn’t see any animals but we were all making too much noise for that :).. The bus ride to the first platform was almost as exciting as the zip line itself! The bus had to literally drive straight up, almost 90 degrees, a road with only 2 tracks of cement. We thought we were getting a free roller coaster ride! After the zip lining we were debating to go on a horse back ride but it was a boring trail, it didn’t even go into the rainforest! It was also getting very late and we had to either call for a ride or walk to a bus stop. We ended up walking to the bus stop since our driver from the previous day wasn’t answering. We waited at the bus stop ad it was getting dark so Luis’s Uncle decided to start walking. We walked, as it got dark, in Flores, along the highway... those words don’t do it justice but needless to say it was a scary experience and I was utterly relieved when a bus stopped for us and let us on. Never do what we did!! Nothing happened but it still wasn’t the safest thing to be doing. We went back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and made our way to the bus station for the looooooooooooooong journey home.