Overnight Bus Ride... suprise comfort?

They gave us tuna fish sandwiches for a nine hour bus ride. Is that a good idea?

¨Panes de pescado¨ aside, the ride here was pretty darn comfortable. A double decker bus with reclining seats, leg rests, TVs with the movie ¨Click¨ in English, a juice box and some cookies made the journey relatively painless. Covering the entire upstairs windshield with a big curtain also helped keep the passengers at ease. We never knew if the horns honking past were at us or some other double decker monster.

We left Panajachel yesterday around 4pm, an uneventful day spent gathering snacks and shipping stuff back to the States. We met an incredibly friendly and helpful Guatemalan named Christian who ran a coffee shop/international shipping company. We really wanted to give him our business but he was more into shipping metric tons than the small box of gifts. He ended up selling us an incredible latte and giving us packaging so we could wrap our stuff up in his shop and take it to the post office where it would ship for half price. We really hope he does well - he´s also a painter, I forgot to mention his shop triples as a gallery.

The post office re-wrapped the package with more paper and tape than the entire contents, but we´re confident that whatever destination it arrives at, it will be intact. The US Postal Service could take a cue from the Correo Guateo, they have SERVICE. I should apologize to the amiable young man who helped us - I tried to ask if they had ¨boxes¨ at the Post Office, and asked him instead if he had any ¨nuts¨. Crazy Spanish! He didn´t flinch.

So now we´re in Flores, a little island of a town literally a couple hundred meters across. (Multiply by 3 for feet - remember the volcano?) They say it´s in a lake, and kind of dirty, but it´s in more of a moat and somewhat quaint. A bit surprising since it´s a stopping point for the area´s big attraction - Tikal! A small ancient Mayan city is located about an hour from here and boasts some incredible pyramids, ruins and carvings created by kings with cool names like Two Comb and King Chocolate thousands of years ago. We haven´t gone there yet, so we might be a little off on the names and dates. I´m sure it will be astounding.

We got a great room in Flores, third floor with a view and a balcony. We successfully negotiated the price down to twice what it should be, a source of pride for us! We are getting more comfortable with Spanish and making new friends here in Central America. Emily is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the marketplace, she actually resold some traditional Mayan crafts at a profit.

So we´re just going to wander around this afternoon, take it easy and then rock Tikal tomorrow - apparently there´s a lot of walking involved and a lot of ground to cover. We´ll try to get some pictures out there next time. Won´t that be nice!?