La Lancha

OK now things have settled down a bit and there is time to write about the trip up North we took on the 7th (seems so long ago.) We arrived our first night and were picked up and brought to the hotel. A brief sleep, then up to go back to the airport for the 50 min flight to Flores. The plane was small, and I was brave and we arrived to the hotel driver right on time. The drive was beautiful. The area is called Peten and it is a large region that includes the large lake that our hotel was on. Our Spanish was passable enough for us to get by without a problem.


The drive toward the end was bumpy and slow, partly because of the road condition, and partly because every 50 yards we had to stop for some family of animals to cross the road...pigs, dogs, wild turkeys, ducks, chickens...there were horses tethered to the side of the road, and all the other animals just roamed free. We finally arrived...an hour drive.





The hotel was lovely, and laid back.











The first thing in our room we were shown was the "shell phone" an intercom to contact the front desk. Cute.



We had a casita with a little patio with a hammock, which Jon was in within a few minutes. The view of the lake was amazing.



We were in our room for all of an hour before we took off to canoe in the lake. We were the only people on the water and it was sunny and amazing. We heard a funny noise that seemed to be coming closer and then Jon realized that a rain cloud was about to move over us. Within a minute or two it was raining, but the rest of the sky was completely clear- so the raindrops, when you looked up, were like little falling pieces of light. There was a beautiful rainbow and I have to say that it was one of the most peaceful and joyous moments I have experienced. Magical.



That night in the pool was a spider the size of a silver dollar using a leaf as his boat. He paddled around the pool with his leg. At one point a little bug hopped on, the spider paddled to the other side of the pool, and the bug hopped off. For real. A spider taxi...who knew?!

The next day was Tikal. I´ll come back to post on that during Julian´s next nap. Oh, and today´s update too...

xo
Sam Jon and Julian