Winding down...

I cannot believe how quickly this trip is coming to an end. We have had some amazing adventures since the last time I wrote!

The Eco-Saunas were WONDERFUL!!! We were supposed to go with the school, but Brit´s friend Gabriel drove us in his car instead. (We also decided to live it up by enhancing our sauna "detoxifying" experience with a bottle of red wine. True vacation style.) We had a five-day weekend, yet again, going out dancing every night. We´ve gone back to La Rumba a few times and know a BUNCH of people there. This place totally feels like home! Our last day of school was Friday and I was already sad, and then on the way to school I greeted the usual people and one of them that day stopped me and asked what my name was, where I´m studying, etc. Unbelievably friendly. I had the theme song to Cheers playing in my head pretty much all day, "Where everybody knows your name..."

Friday was also our despedida at the school and it was SO FUN!!! Some of Brit´s housemates came out (Gabriel, Faustino, Selvin, Edwin) and then our families and teachers came. There were about 15 of us, I think, and we ate fantastic food, drank lots of rum & cokes, laughed, danced and graduated. We ended up staying there as a group until after Ingrid and Manuel left... oops. We were in a group of about 8 of us and went out. Ended up at La Rumba again, danced the night away as usual. I just can´t believe how much my Spanish improves after all these nights of hanging out with Guatemalans :)

Saturday night we got tickets to go see Caramelo Criminal (from Perú, now based out of Germany) and some other bands. It was a full concert of hip hop and reggae that was SO FUN! I have never danced so hard in my life! Brit and I both want to get Caramelo Criminal CDs... What a night.

Another fun thing is that we got two new students at the school this past week, Ana and Carolina, who are from Sweden. We had a blast with them as well! Saturday morning at 6:30am, somehow we dragged ourselves out of bed in time to have Martín (my first teacher) take us in a group with another school to the beach at Champerico. Amazing! It was my first time at a black sand beach. We played in the waves, ate lunch there, and just hung out. I had to wake Brit up as we were leaving because she fell asleep in a hammock. :)

So we just got back a couple hours ago from our VERY short trip to Tikal. We left Sunday at about 2:00pm, headed to Guate where we caught our next bus at 9:00pm to go to Flores. We arrived in Flores after maaaany hours on a bus at about 5:30am then had to wait for guys from the Tikal Inn to come pick us up. It was quite an adventure because we had arrived at the first bus station and realized we had received ZERO instructions. But, it all worked out! Tikal was AMAZING!!! The jungle has some pretty crazy insects... We saw this GIGANTIC spider at dinner that seemed to be about the size of a lime. We kinda freaked, and the server told us not to worry, that it´s the BIG spiders we should be worried about. Yikes!

After we arrived, we ate a delicious breakfast of eggs, friend bananas, beans and tortillas with a big cup of coffee. Then, our guide, Pablo, took us around Tikal for a few hours. We saw the temples which are so impressive... the amount of engineering it took to construct those buildings prior to 800AD is just amazing. Each plaza is constructed so that when someone was standing at the top of a pyramid the entire city could hear, for miles. Craziness. The acoustincs were astounding, along with the sheer SIZE of the temples. We made it to the top of templo cuatro, where you can see the jungle for miles and miles. It was amazing to imagine what it must have been like to look down and see an entire city instead of just miles of jungle because the place was HUGE! They still haven´t uncovered many of the temples because just to begin digging one out takes about 18 months and there isn´t enough money in Guatemala to do it. I also can´t imagine working where there is a chingón de mosquitos everywhere. As we were walking, I was seriously afraid to open my mouth because I thought I would eat one... or ten. Good thing we were prepared with bug spray!

We ate lunch with Pablo, coolest guide ever, and swam in the pool all afternoon. We drank some beers, ate dinner... really, it was all just walking, drinking and eating. REALLY low-key since we were the only guests! Played some cards with our super-nice server, Edgar, with whom we exchanged information for when he comes to the States in a few years. :)

The next morning, we were kind of bummed we didn´t have enough money to pay for seeing the sun rise from a temple in Tikal, but things always end up working out... Pablo came up as we were eating breakfast and asked if we wanted to go do a zipline through the canopy of the jungle. Heck yes!!! It was SO fun! We only paid $30 for a full HOUR (9 platforms!) of zooming over the jungle. Absolutely amazing... Brit also used her feminine powers of persuasion so that we could come back and shower even after checkout. When the guy came back after asking his boss he said we could because we were so pretty. Oy. Nod-and-smile, thank you!

We left Tikal Inn at 2:00pm and at about 3:00 when we were close to Flores, Brit realized we had left our bus tickets at the hotel. Doh! Moment of slight panic, but the guys from the hotel said their next trip was at 6:00pm and would bring the tickets to the station in Flores then. SO NICE!!!

Flores was absolutely gorgeous! It was like a little beach town, but in the middle of the country. It´s an island in the middle of a lake and it is SO HOT! I seriously don´t think I stopped sweating between the first minute in Tikal and like an hour after we left Flores. We did some shopping, drank piña coladas on a porch overlooking the lake... people there were also SUPER friendly and I would like to spend time there in the future (if I can deal with the heat!). Very lovely. Then... last night, back on the bus at 9:00pm. Arrived in Guate at 6:00am this morning, hopped another bus at 8:00am and arrived back HOME to Xela at 1:00pm. What a whirlwind trip!

So, we have a bunch of stuff to fit into these last two days. I promised some of our friends that we would make it to Quixote, a bar owned by one of them, and then La Rumba tonight (as usual). We also had promised Emilio Talvo that we would return to La Fonda del Ché tomorrow and want to go back to La Democracia (the market) to find some music to bring home. That is definitely one thing I will miss-- loud salsa, reggae, reggaeton EVERYWHERE! I´ll just bring it back with me. :)

Geez, we have met so many fantastic people... I almost cried at the graduation on Friday several times. Oy. Well, off to make the most of the last couple days! Woohoo! Hasta la próxima vez...