Guatemala / Flores, incredibly good! 🇬🇹

I can already tell upon arrival, even though it's dark, that I don't have enough time here. On the way here, we added another great person to our group, so we are traveling as a group of five again.

Day 1 is spent exploring the area and visiting the view point. But enough about that, because Day 2 is going to be awesome! 😄

We visit Tikal for sunrise, so we wake up at 2:30 and take the one-hour drive. On the 45-minute journey to 'Temple 4' (which is the highest), through the dark jungle, we see a tarantula (bird spider) and are surrounded by monkey sounds (the sound of their roaring was used for the T-Rex in Jurassic Park 1), that alone is incredible.

But now onto the highlight, as the animal world around us wakes up, the sun slowly crawls up the horizon. The first Toucan that shows itself impresses me once again. We spend about an hour and a half on the ruin, listening and watching over the treetops of the Guatemalan jungle.

The pictures can't even come close to capturing it, but you can get an idea.

Afterwards, we have a guided tour that covers the history of the Mayas, nature, the jungle, and other creatures.

Here we try the numbing leaves of a black pepper tree, which were used for a type of tooth operation among the Mayas. We get chewing gum from the chewing gum tree and I eat a termite that somehow tastes like a carrot. -Whatever horse rode me there.-

We visit various ruins and other things that are higher than the trees, before we go back pretty tired.

It's also worth mentioning that a haircut here cost about 1.50€ and takes about as long as a €37 haircut in Germany. 😏

All in all, Guatemala was the right decision and definitely one of the greatest experiences of my life.

A little side story. The return trip from Flores to Guatemala takes from 7 in the morning until about 23:30.

At the border from Belize to Mexico, I forgot my backpack on the bus (9 people + driver) and quickly realized that the GoPro was no longer there. So I did what I do in moments like these: I made everyone crazy and caused a commotion.

I also told the driver and the assistant of the travel company about it, and pretended to call the cops, so that no one would leave the bus before it was searched. Of course, I would never actually do that.

About a minute later, the bus stops because it has a technical problem, after the driver briefly opens the back door, the journey continues.

At that moment, it was already clear to me where the camera was most likely. In addition, the gentlemen kept telling me the whole time that the camera probably slid to the back through the seat and would surely be lying there, which is physically impossible because my backpack was in the back and the camera was in my carry-on bag in the front.

So we arrive in Chetumal, I look through the back area of ​​the bus and the door with an independent person, and there is definitely no camera there. I walk away to give the bums time to put it back.

This procedure takes about 10 seconds, because after the bus driver passes me and goes towards the door, I am already asked if that's my camera lying there. It is where it wasn't before. Pretty poor performance by the gentlemen, but my intuition has proven itself once again. Now I can laugh about it.

Viva la México! 🇲🇽

Actually, I wanted to have finished the post a long time ago.

Since we were fed up, we decided to take a taxi to Tulum, about 7€ more per person, just to be a bit faster.

This day is a complete chaos, so of course we have a flat tire, luckily Eduardo is well equipped and has a spare tire ready, in the middle of the highway in Mexico, the tire is changed, I manage the traffic with my flashlight and Timo lends a hand. So our luck continues.

So much for the rest going smoothly, unfortunately Eduardo forgot to screw the oil cap back on, so we stop again 70 km later and look for oil because we are on the verge of a piston seizure. By the way, the cap is in the engine compartment and the oil he had just refilled is there too.

I wonder what else will go wrong here.