Well, I did wake up in time for my 3:20am pickup to do a sunrise day trip in Tikal.  (Actually I was outside by 3:17am, but the guy was early!  Which is basically unheard of in Central America.  He ended up coming back for me though, so it was no big deal.)  Its about a hour drive from Flores (where I was staying) to Tikal (the Mayan ruins).  So we started out 40 minute hike at about 4:20am.  (This was my second hike through a jungle in the pitch dark.  I really wish I would have brought my headlamp or even a flashlight!)  My group made it to the top of Temple 4, which is the tallest temple in the complex, and then just basically sat there and sort of meditated/slept. 

As luck would have it, the sunrise was horrible.  It was incredibly foggy, so we could only see about 30 feet in front of us.  I saw that it got lighter, but had no idea which direction the sunshine was even coming from.  (Everytime I’ve ever woken up for a sunrise, it has always been a cloudy day.  What’s up with that?!)  It wasn’t a totally lose though.  The jungle started waking up around us as the sun came up.  First, we heard some birds.  Then the howler monkeys started growling and marking their territory.  Howler monkeys are actually really intimidating sounding animals.  They sound more like a jaguard roaring or a dinosaur growling.  So it was really cool listening to them howling in stereo from all parts of the jungle. 

 After chilling out on top of the temple for a while, we did our tour around the ruins.  Tikal was basically the New York City of 1500 years ago.  There were 250,000 to 300,000 people living within the city and there were 1,000’s of buildings in the city.  (Most of them haven’t been cleared yet, but there are at least 20-30 temples and ancient ruins to look at and climb around.)  The tour guide was great, and told us a lot of interesting stuff about the ruins.

I was back to my hotel by about noon, but was so tired after hiking around the ruins for about 7 hours.  So I basically just hung out in Flores and had another mid-day siesta.  (My sleeping patterns are such a mess now.) I decided to take the 5am shuttle to Belize City the next day (I thought I didn’t really need to sleep in until 7:30).  Unfortunately, my alarm on my watch gave out, so I woke up at 4:53am with only 7 mintues to go.  I had already packed and set out my clothes, so I made it outside by about 4:59.  This time the shuttle was about 40 mintues late, so all of that rushing around was for nothing.  But at least I made the shuttle.  I’m in San Pedro, Belize now and am enjoying the last few days of my trip around Central America.

I didn´t really write enough about San Pedro in my last blog to do it justice.  San Pedro was my favortie stop of the trip so far.  It has a totally hippy-backpacker vibe to it.  (There are tons of massage places, yoga schools, and new agey things.  I saw some people on the street selling granola bars that they had made in their solar powered oven- hippy enough for you?!)  Anyways, San Pedro is the cheapest place that I went to in Central America.  I stayed at a place called Pinoccios and for a single room (with a shared bath) it was 20Q (about $2.50) a night.  (San Pedro is like South East Asia prices, I´m loving it!)

Anyways, it is really easy to hang out and spend a few days in San Pedro.  On my first full day, I rented a kayak for a few hours and went around part of the Lago Atitlan.  The lake is huge, and a deep blue color.  It´s absolutely goregous!  After kayaking and eating the most amazing falafel, I went and had a Thai massage at Punta de Oro (which is a really cool little backpacker resort right on the lake).  The massage was amazing and was turned out to be more of a fusion Thai-Shiatsu massage (which just so happen to be my 2 favorite styles of massage).

On my second day in San Pedro, I went horseback riding for a few hours.  I don´t know what it is about Central American horses, but they have all been so gentle and follow commands so well.  With this horse, I just had to gently brush my foot on it and it would trott off down the road.  My guide and I went to a very beautiful look out point over the lakes and volcanoes.  Then he took me to a coffee farm and a pretty volcanic sand (black sand) beach.  I had to have another falafel pita and a massage.  But on the second day I had made a reservation to have a hot stone massage, which is something I´ve always been meaning to try but never got around to before.

The hot stone massage was quite interesting.  It was a lot more new agey than any massage I´ve ever had before.  First I laid on some specially arranged stones under my back, then she put different hot stones on me to line up with the chakra points. And then basically used the stones to give me a massage, focusing on energy lines and stuff.  It was very enjoyable, but probably not my favorite style massage ever.  (1 interesting thing though, is that I think the hot stone massage cured me of my cold.  I was coming down with a cold, and at one stage of the massage my nose started to run a ton.  It felt like the cold was just leaving me all at once.  Since then I´ve felt fine and my cold seems to be gone.  Very Interesting!)

The next day was a huge day of travel for me.  I got an email at about 9am from the Korean Embassay saying that they had finished processing my visa.  By 9:30am I was chasing the minivan shuttle down the road, so I could start the journey back to Guatemala City.  (There is only 1 shuttle a day to Antigua from San Pedro, so I couldn´t miss it.)  There was tons of construction on the road, and at one point we were stopped for an hour waiting to move forward.  Some businessminded local people had even set up a little road side bbq, selling steak and soda to the people stuck in the massive traffic jam.  Anyways, the 2 1/2 hour ride turned out to be more like 4 1/2 hours.  I still had to catch a chicken bus to Guatemala City and then find a taxi to take me to the Embassay.  (The embassay was only open between 2-4:30 pm, so I had a narrow window of time.)  But I ended up making it there fine, and now it´s legal for me to work again in Korea.

That wasn´t the end of my journey though.  I still had to get to Flores, Guatemala, which is a city in the north of the country (pretty much on the complete opposite side of the country as Guat City).  I got an overnight bus with Linea Dorada, and it went quite smoothly.  I had 2 seats to myself, so I was able to curl up and sleep for a few hours of the journey.  We arrived in Flores at about6:30 am.  Too late to go to Tikal (the Mayan ruins)  for sunrise, so I just found a place to have some coffee and then found a bargain hotel room ($2.90 per night).  The guidebook wasn´t wrong when it said it only takes an hour to see Flores.  There isn´t much here besides cafes all serving the same thing, travel agencies all selling the same bus tickets and day trips, and souveiner shops all selling the same colorful blankets and clothes.  The day trips are all quite expensive here too, so I choose to be lazy today.  I had a nice siesta, a browse around the shops, and spent some time on the Internet.

Tomorrow I´m leaving at 3:30am (yes it´s true!)  to go on a sunrise tour of Tikal, which is supposed to be the most well preserved and beautiful of all of the Mayan ruins.  Then the next day I´m having a sleep in and won´t leave until 7am for my bus ride into Belize.

Antigua is a really cool place.  It is very beautiful and historical!  There are at least 10-15 old churches (and ruins) to check out, plus tons of great places to eat and lots of day trip activities to do.  I spent most of my time in Antigua just hanging out, exploring the city, going to a few of the old churches, checking out the market, and eating yummy foods you don´t normal see in Central America (like Greek and Isreali dishes, plus some amazing tiramisu!). 

I went to Panachel Volcano as a day trip from Antigua and that was amazing!  It is an active volcano, so there is pretty much always lava flowing out of it.  We had to climb up the volcano for about 2 hours before we reached the hot lava part, which was both really cool and quite scary at the same time.  (Guatemala being a 3rd world country and all, doesn´t really have any safety percautions.  You just basically look out for yourselve.)  So tourists (men, women, and children) are all climbing around on freshly cooled lava.  We were jumping over cracks that had white hot rocks in the bottom and sometimes even little pools of lava in them.  It was pretty freaky because the lava rocks are both sharp and brittle, so sometimes they just break from underneath you unexpectantly.  (We saw one guy coming down the volcano, who had had his shoe burned off when he accidentially stepped in the wrong place.)

Anyways, I made it acrossed the cooled lava rocks fine, and then I was in for the real treat.  A big lava river pouring out of a hole in the side of the volcano.  It was amazing to see, and incredibly hot!  The man running my hostel told me to bring marshmellows to roast over the lava.  I brought some and got some cool pictures, but it was impossible to get close enough to actually roast the marshmellow over the flames!  The scenary was so beautiful, because pretty much in every direction you looked you saw a different volcano.

Getting back was a bit trickier.  It was a sunset tour, so as we reached the hot lava the sky was starting to get dark.  It looked really cool, but then I remembered that I would have to make it over the lava obsticale course and all the way back down the mountain in the dark.  I stumbled around a bit, but made it back safe and sound.

Right now I´m in San Pedro de Lago, which is a really cool place on a beautiful lake.  It is sort of a backpacker paradise, with tons of cheap places to stay, great food (the best chocolate soufflae I´ve ever had and amaing falafel too), and fun things to do.  But my favorite part is all of the cheap massages.  I had a Thai-Shiatsu fusion massage today, and tomorrow I think I´ll have the 2 hour hot stone massage.  It´s like San Pedro has all the best things in Central America mixed with the highlights of South East Asia.  It´s an amazing place!

Copan is a really cute little town.  It has all of the colorful colonial style buildings, tons of bogevilla trees, a cute town square/park, great hotels, and nice cafes.  It is quite touristy, but also has a relaxed friendly small town vibe to it.  I only spent about 24 hours in Copan (because I was in a hurry to get to Guatemala City to drop off my passport and start the visa process at the Korean Embassay). 

I had dinner at a cute little cafe near my hostel.  I ordered a burrito and could not believe it when the waiter delivered it to my table.  It was at least a foot and a half long and filled full of yummy things (chicken, avacado, veggies, beans, rice etc.).  It could of easily fed a whole family!  And it only cost about $3, which was a welcome chage after spending 4 days in expensive Rotan where $3 wouldn´t really buy you anything. 

The next day, I woke up really early and walked down to the Copan ruins.  I was the first person to arrive for the day, so I had the ruins all to myself for about 30 minutes before the tour buses started showing up.  There were a bunch of really colorful parrots hanging out at the entrance of the ruins, which was really cool to see too.  The ruins themselves are quite amazing.  There are alot of intricately carved stones representing different Mayan gods and kings.  The Mayans built ruins on top of old existing ruins that had been destroyed by an earthquake back in about 600ad.  There is a tunnel going under the ruins so that you can see part of the oldest temples.  Normally you have to buy a second ticket for $15 to get into the tunnel part.  I didn´t know this, so I hadn´t brought enough money with me.  Luckily, I was able to bribe the guard with $6, to let me into the tunnels.  It was really amazing but very creepy too! One of the entrances looking like you are climbing dwon into a grave or something.  (The first thing you see is the tomb of an old king, so I guess I really did climb down into a grave!) 

After leaving the ruins, I hoped on a shuttle to Guatemala City.  It was the easiest border crossing ever.  (It maybe took 10 minutes.)  And the ride to Guat City went smoothly.  I wasn´t too impressed by the capital though.  It is the biggest city in Central America, and it is dirty, ugly, and sort of dangerous.  So I just checked into a Fenix Guesthouse and hung out in my room all night. 

The next day, I had to go to the Korean Embassay to aply for my work visa.  I ended up going to the wrong building (they haven´t updated the website with the new address).  So I had to take 2 expensive taxi rides to get there.  (It´s at Euro Plaza now, if anyone ever has to go there.)  The people at the embassay were really nice, but very picky.  They made me fill out tons of unnecessary forms, get new pictures taken (because my head didn´t fill up the right amount of space in my old pictures), and even have an interview.  But hopefully they are processing my visa as I type this.

Then I went to Antigua, which is where I am now.  I´m staying in a great hostel called Black Cat.  It has free breakfast, free internet, free movies, hot showers (a realy luxery), and clean rooms.  Yeah!