Guatemala Part 2: Tikal & Flores

This was probably my favorite part of our trip. We woke up at 3:00 and drove to Tikal, which is about a six hour trip (not because it’s actually very far away, but just because the roads aren’t great). We drove through lots of little towns out in the jungle and it was very interesting to see how people live there. Everything was so green and beautiful. We also hit a couple of unmarked speed bumps going pretty fast and lost two hubcaps, so that was exciting.
Wild turkeys in Guatemala are a lot prettier than wild turkeys here.
This was an anteater that ran by a few times. I’d never seen one before.
After we were finished at Tikal (and I got a bunch of GIGANTIC mosquito bites -- they’re pretty nasty there) we drove to Flores, which is an island in Petén. I absolutely loved it there. The architecture was beautiful and it felt like a beach town, even though it’s technically on a lake. There are actually steps down into the lake and lots of people were swimming.
This was our hotel. It was really nice for Guatemala (other than the part where a chunk of our ceiling fell down at 2 AM and landed really loudly on John’s nightstand, scaring us both to death).

Since it was our anniversary, we had dinner by ourselves at a little restaurant overlooking the water. The food was amazing (I had chicken with a cantaloupe sauce) and the view was incredible as the sun set.
It was such a beautiful and unique place to spend our anniversary. I wouldn’t have minded staying a couple more days, but we had to head back to Guatemala City early the next morning. 
Just as a sidenote: I’ve decided to use Disqus for comments on my blog. Because there’s no way to import old blogger comments, all comments that have been left previously are no longer visible (still a little sad about that). Just didn’t want anyone to think I deleted their comments.