Our work here is done

Last friday we finished our first project in Guatemala! We made it through four weeks and were sad to say goodbye to San Andres, the Park, the family we stayed with and all the volunteers we met too.

Three day trek into the jungle to the Mayan sites at El Zotz and Tikal

Very wet. This is where we slept. Mosquito headnets, very handy.

The toilet!

Our hammocks with mosquito nets

Kieran and Andres battling against the many mosquitoes

En La Bosca

Last weekend we did a three day trek into the jungle to the Mayan sites of El Zotz and Tikal. Sleeping outdoors in hammocks, not a shower in sight for 3 days, immense heat and humidity, mosquitos, and the most horrendous toilets ever!

Day 1. El Cruce to El Zotz- a 5 hour trek into the jungle. At sunset we visited some caves to watch millions of bats. As they flew within a whisker of our faces it began to smell like chicken sheds and was a real David Attenborough moment.

Day 2. In the morning we visited the ruins at El Zotz, which are unexcavated and overgrown. In the afternoon we trekked for 3 hours to our next camp in the middle of nowhere, where it lamped it down with rain.

Day 3. After a challenging night in the hammocks we set off on the final leg of the journey, a further 5 hour trek through deep jungle and lots of sticky smelly mud, ending in Tikal, and at last a decent toilet!

Animals we encountered- 3 dead tarantulas and one live one, a scorpion, lots of really evil looking spiders with massive webs (all across the paths we were walking on).
Bats, bats, bats, bats flapping around our heads!!! little leathery wings flapping in our ears!!
Lots of occelots (we think) with long stripey tails. There were also loads of monkeys swinging through the trees and shaking the branches so fruit dropped on us! All the time we could hear Howler monkeys (but never saw any), they sounded like monsters in a horror movie, which really gave me the willies when I was trying to get to sleep.

Photos from Tikal, Guatemala.

Mayan ruins deep in the jungle. Amazing place with Toucans and so many spider monkeys in the trees. We watched the sunset from one of the pyramids and stayed the night nearby. We've been three times now.

Apparently the setting for the rebel base camp in one of the star wars films but I'm not so sure.

El Lago Peten Itza

The lake is beautiful and about twenty yards from our house. We come down to this pier almost every day after work to cool off. The sunset is amazing and thunder and lightening storms can be so spectacular. The dawn photo's below are of San Andres as we took the 7am boat ride to town.

You´ll notice the suntan's coming along nicely!

Photos from San Andres

Here we are at the entrance to the ecological park where we are volunteering.

The building above is soon to be the town's new library. Our donations are helping to get it built and we spent some time there helping out.

The main street in San Andres, the local boozer is the third building from the left.

Here's the volunteers at the park.

The road down to our house. We have to climb this every morning and it's a killer. The picture doesn't do it justice.

San Andres, Peten

Life in San Andres is full of challenges. We are living with a family who speak no english so we are trying our best with Spanish. There are bugs everywhere, mosquitoes, spiders, scorpions and many unidentified flying things. Most of which seem to end up in our bedroom at some point. San Andres seems to be overrun with dogs - half starved mangy looking dogs who are tired and lazy in the midday heat but completely insane at night. So we get our drinking done early here. Things are pretty basic, outdoor toilet and shower and washing clothes outside on a washboard. The work is OK, we leave for work at eight and are usually cooling off in the lake soon after midday. Lake Peten Itza is about 20 yards from our house and is beautiful, particulary in the scorching afternoon heat.
The work is manual and quite varied. So far we've been replacing rotten fence posts around the perimeter of the park, rebuilding a chicken shed and replanting banana trees (where the tarantulas live). Next week we're in the butterfly garden. One more week to go.

Photos from Mexico

The cathedral in Mexico City

The Basilica de Guadeloupe

Teotihuacan

Pope John Paul, made from thousands of brass keys apparently

MEXICO
Mexico City - Puebla - Oaxaca - Puerto Escondido - Tapachula - Guatemala City
From the high altitude and air pollution of the capital to the severe humidity of the pacific coast! A quick summary to catch up...A great country but we won't be rushing back. A good place to start the trip as there's so many English speakers, backpacker hostels and well trodden tourist routes with backpackers and holiday makers. Aztec ruins galore, the highlight for me would have to be a lightning storm on top of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, an Aztec ruin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotihuacan

We even took in a pilgrimage site in Mexico city - the Basilica of Guadelupe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Guadalupe

Itinerary

16th August 2006
Flight from Heathrow to Mexico City
overland to Guatemala City
26th August 2006
Flight from Guatemala City to Flores, Guatemala
First project at www.volunteerpeten.com for a month
Possible trip to Cuba before heading to Costa Rica for our second project
From Costa Rica to Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil and Chile.
1st February 2007
Flight from Santiago, Chile to Sydney
6 weeks in Australia before flying to Tokyo
That´s the plan anyway...