Tuesday evening and Tikal on Wednesday

So now Andrew and I are on our own. Mom and Dad headed back to Indiana via Miami and Rickenbachs couldn't be with us in Guatemala City until Wednesday evening. So we flew to Guate. City, prayed that someone from the rental car company would be there waiting for us (and they were) and prayed some more that we could find our way to SETECA (and we did). So the Lord heard and answered our prayers. I'm afraid I was too nervous to take pictures. :) This is us Wednesday morning on our way to Tikal. For those who may not have heard of Tikal, it is a place where the Mayans had their civilization a couple thousand years ago. It started out rainy and cold, we were delayed an hour because of rain in Flores (where we were to land). But we got gone and here are pictures of the rest of our very interesting day. We met our tour guide, we were the only tourists with that tour group so it was awesome. We could do whatever we wanted. Our tour guide was awesome, you'll see a picture of him later. We had about an hour trip from Flores to Tikal. Our first colorful bird sighting. I forget the name of this bird. Our tour guide knew the names of all of the native birds and all of the animals we saw. The first view we had of a temple They must repair any broken limestone blocks very quickly or the whole structure will deteriorate and fall down. See the wood over the door? That has to be 2000 yrs old. Our tour guide, Julio. Here is how we got to the top of one of the temples. They wouldn't let us walk up the limestone steps that are in the front of the temple. (I got to do that 34 yrs ago) We were sooooooo sore for the next couple of days. These steps were incredibly rickety. Andrew did NOT want to use them at all. We had a french tourist take our picture. We were on the top of the temple opposite the one behind us. That is probably obvious, but I don't know and I don't want to assume. Here is a spider monkey. Three really sweet kids.
Toucan SamA howler monkeyThese are animals that are related to our coons. We must have seen a family of 50 or so.

After about 4 hours of walking we had our lunch under this thatch roof building. It was so yummy and very neat to be eating "outdoors". It had been threatening rain the whole day but it held off until we got under the canopy here in the "restaurant" then it poured. But it was done by the time we got done eating.

And then, getting on the plane in Flores, heading back to Guatemala City. Rickenbachs were to be in Guatemala City when we got there this night, but we thought they were going to meet us at SETECA, however, they met us at the airport and we were so very glad to see some other white faces. Plus we were hungry and we didn't know where to go to eat so they were able to take us to "Sarita's" before we went to bed.