Antigua

Still love this place. Beautiful and colonial and smoking volcanos but its become more touristy, busy.

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splurged on the way here - just under $5 including a nice tip

San Pedro la Laguna, Lago de Atitlan

This place was great. Great vibe and pace and steep, skinny cobblestone streets.

sunrise from my balcony

fireworks, parade of the virgin mary, streets shut down for music on the street corners. and oh yeah, they have aguardiente in Guat too

Coban to Atitlan

Just a great day of riding. Jungle and mountaintops and steeps and landslides and washed out roads and...  breathtaking at times

Cuevas and the road to Coban

Woke up early in Tikal. The jungle makes you feel incredibly small. Like being at sea.

Cafe in Flores on the shores of Peten

So I got civilized again. For a little while.

watch out for herds of cattle on the highway

Took some backroads cross country and there were some department of archaeolgica caves not too far off the main back road.

"anderson" the 10 y.o. spelunker. gave him my North Face butt pack and he loved it.

trippy grottos and openings in this cave system. and all kinds of pottery shards and ancient hearths and all kinds of crap in there. and we were just walking around, waking up bats, and doing whatever we wanted in this ancient site.

"main" back road

waiting for another ferry

ferry captain sits in a bathtub with an outboard on a traveler system on the downstream side of the boat. 5 Quetzales or about 60 cents for the crossing.

Tikal! - Guatemala and R.O.U.S's

Oh my. I was blown away by this place.

stopped for a bite on the shores of Peten

beware of Jaguars

and R(odents)O(f)U(nusual)S(ize)

and blue headed weird vulture turkey peacock bird thingys

photo can't capture how huge the ceiba trees are here

trail to the temples

first glimpses

oh my. these things are enormous

first sight of temple IV. Tallest in the mayan world

I watched the sun set over the jungle from the top of temple IV

Actually climbed up on the scaffolding on the closed off west side of the top of the temple to watch the sunset. Unreal experience. Howler monkeys yelling below me. Spider monkeys chattering because some predator is close. Birds making noises like a starwars gunfight.

Then climbed to the top of temple II in the almost pitch dark with a couple other people in the grand plaza.

eerie hiking back to my campsite after sunset

That is a 3-4 foot juvenile fer d lance. deadliest snake in the world. caught it with my headlamp when it looked like the tree root was moving. that would have changed the trip just a little. holy shit. jungle.

Cayo

Left the Caribe to head overland again. Mostly uneventful day. Had some fun starting my bike after 5 days and lots of rain in the Radisson, Belize City, secure parking. Good to be back on mi moto again. 

one last shot of the three amigos

Belize City Lighthouse

This was a nice respite for a couple nights. Mostly hung out and had a lay day. Needed to detox after a week with Rayray and the ballman. Dinked around on the bike. Their WiFi wasn't working and wasn't secure so I set it up for them. Javier, the owner, and Vincente, the caretaker/manager, were great. After I got the old junky Linksys setup and explained to Javier why I didn't like it, he goes and brings a new one! So I set it up too. And we tested it all the way down to the farthest cabina. They were so happy - but they didn't offer to give me free camping or anything. I didn't give them my bill though either. Besides, it was $5-/night.

This is also where I met up with two american couples doing much the same as myself but in fully decked out small trucks. We had some great chinese food in town and a rousing game of up the river over a few cocktails back at camp.

My kitchen in San Ignacio, Cayo, Belize

Took the ferry the next morning to see some ruins on my way to Guatemala.

this ferry was operated by a hand crank

Mayans in Belize.

Island time

Conch ceviche

Ray ray w 'da king'

sun comin up on the cayes

the beach fixes everything

bbq on the beach by the cemetery

fine form

more ball