Tikal

Definitely a highlight of the whole Central America trip. We woke at 3am in order to climb Temple IV (highest one) in time to see first daylight wake up the jungle. It was pretty cool to hear the howler monkeys and papagayos make their first calls of the day. The place where we watched first light was about 40m shy of the top, which was covered with scaffolding for restoration, so I took the opportunity to duck some ropes, climb some ladders, and scamper up some sketchy exposed scaffolding to the highest point for miles around. It was really awesome! I would like to note that it was closed for safety reasons and not because my presence would cause any undue damage to the temple structure.

In short, the whole place is amazing! We stayed until 5pm, which was well after the majority of the other tourists had departed, so we had the place to ourselves in the late afternoon. We saw coati and grey fox, plus numerous really cool bird species. I am fascinated by Mayan astronomy and math and my imagination ran amok trying to imagine what the place was like 2000 years ago.

While we were exploring the temples, just Mel and I, we were spotted by a tour group. One of the tourists inquired of her guide in a loud republican accent, ¨Who are they?¨And upon finding out that we were simply people, ¨It´s amazing that you can just walk around here like it´s your own back-yard.¨ I find this perspective both humorous and also really interesting. It is pretty wicked that you can just wander around such an archaeological gem at will, It is also quite American to consider that all such access should be restricted.

Good News

I got an unexpected bit of news in my mailbox this week. It seems that on Nov, 21 Jake Adams and Becca Cooper in one boat and Melanie Love and myself in the other made the first raft descent of ¨Opal Creek.¨ Another crew ran it a few weeks later and posted this report. If you have good class IV raft skills and don't mind a little hike to the put-in, then I highly recommend this raftable classic.

Chilled Out

For our last week in Guatemala we have settled into quite a nice little eco-cabaña dealio on the Rio Cahaboñ. It is really relaxing with caves nearby and loads of tubing to be done on the river. I can participate in one of my favorite past-times, sitting in a hammock and watching the river flow by. Oceans are cool, but I love rivers. Wish I could post a picture.

Next we are off to the famous Tikal.

I didn´t know what day it was...

So I forgot Mel´s birthday. My excuse: I haven´t seen a calendar in two months and I thought it was the next day. Oops, at least I had a present, sort of. How I manage to hang out with someone as extraordinary as Melanie is beyond me.

Travelling is going quite well, although I must admit that I am ready to return to the states and get life in Colorado started up. I tried to explain this to United and they said, "That will be $600 please." Arrgh. At least we are having a great time. Currently we are heading north through El Salvador. Today we went on a wild goose chase to try and find an awesome beach recommended by Eric Eldon. Either we found another beach by the same name or it has seriously degenerated in the past few years. Tomorrow we are headed back to Guatemala, which happens to be our most favoritest country in all of Central America.

This whole lack of photos thing really makes my blog boring! damn thieves!

Movin´

The cat is officially out of the bag (who would ever put a cat in a bag anyway?) Mel and I are moving to Boulder, Colorado when we return to the states in February! I am going to attempt to get and keep a real job, for at least a couple of months.

7 weeks later

We have now been cruising around down here for 7 weeks and it is starting to feel like this is the way life is supposed to be. Getting a job is really going to be a wake up call. Yesterday we said bye to Lou and Jaz and headed to the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, which seems to be a mellower beach version of Guatemala. We plan to be here for a few days before heading to Isla Ometepe in the middle of Lago de Nicaragua. We are currently really excited about checking out a new country, since Panama (Really pretty, but lacks good food, beer, wildlife, and culture)was not quite what we expected.

It was really nice to re-visit Costa Rica, but we did have a bit of bad luck there with busses and theft. Our camera and my cool new shoulder bag were stolen from the foyer of a hostel with Lou Jaz and I standing right there! And, we kept encountering full busses and others that took longer than expected so we missed connections. On the up-side, we did see massive lava avalanches rip down the side of volcan Arenal under starry night skies. It was really cool!

I now have no money and everyone is inviting me on cool trips, Josh wants me to go skiing in Alaska, Dana wants me to run the Grand Canyon (in January) and Futalafu, and Kyle wants me to kayak to Cuba. Someone should pay me to have fun, travel the world, write about it, and take pictures with the camera I don´t have.

Happy New Year!

They have big fireworks in Panama, rockets nearly as big as me that have lots of pretty colors. The five of us got a little tipsy on a sparsly inhabited island on the Pacific side of Panama and stayed up dancing. It was fun.

¨Near death¨ may be a slight exaggeration, but it was scary. Yesterday we went snorkeling on a distant island. It was quite a long ride out in the crappiest boat I have ever had the pleasure of using. During the ride, Jasmine queried the captain, ¨Does it ever get rough?¨ and he replied that it could get bumpy when the wind comes from the north. Sure enough, on the return trip there was a healthy breeze from the north. The swells increased to about four feet and started breaking over the bow. Normally I would not sweat class III, but the integrity of the craft and the length of the swim made me nervous. There is no way we could swim to shore before dark. Then the boat started breaking. Everything was out of our control, so all we could do is hang on, clinch our jaws and get well hydrated for the impending swim. We made it although my jaw is still a bit sore.