First draw of the year is... something boring I started drawing way over a year ago RIP

    i need to finish this up soon. i am planning on leaving for copan, honduras in the morning. copan is the last major ruin system until machu picchu, in peru. after copan i am figuring on going to the bay islands for some beach, sun and scuba diving. scuba diving has been a skill that i have been meaning to pick up. allegedly it is one of the cheapest places in the world to learn, the other place being thailand. but after that i have to make the long push down to peru to meet a friend in december. the only real difficulty is finding an alternate route out of panama, because the border with colombia is too dangerous for a land crossing. but i have heard nothing but good things about columbia, so i won't skip it. but anyways...     i left coban the next morning to go to flores, a city near to the tikal ruin site. it was a long drive down off the mountain into the steamy flat lands of the north. i arrived in flores, which is on a near island on another large lake. i figured to take another bus to el remate, which was about half way to tikal. the reasoning was that instead of getting up at some ridiculous hour to witness sunrise at tikal, i would only have to get up at a semi-ridiculous hour to get there. el remate is nothing much to look at, a few places to stay and several restuarants. but at this time of year there were only a handful of visitors. so i was one of, maybe, 5... got a strange cabaña nearby. it was up on a hill. the room was completely open. no door, no enclosed windows, open air. but the area, near the lake, was somehow free of mosquitos. thankfully. but i did have a mosquito net, with an enormous hole in it at the top. but i was able to cover that and close up the other holes. i learned later that this was a dengue fever zone too. so much for being mosquito free. but i did not see many though. but i did see some large insects and arachnids. i did have an unpleasant surprise one morning as i put my boots on. i put one on and as i put the other on i realized that there was something in my boot. i immediately pictured that farside cartoon where the scorpion is explaining to his friend his horrible experience of being in this cave and being attacked this 5 headed monster. of course in the background there is a fallen boot and the feet of a dead man. i quickly removed my boot and shook it out. a reddish brown frog fell out. i reminded my self that that i needed to do that everytime i am in the bush like this...     as any of you scifi films geeks may know that tikal was the rebel base in the original star wars movie. it is a enormous ruin complex in the jungle. the park is 55 square kilometers. i got picked up at 5:30 in the morning and we arrived at the park before it opened. but so much for the sunrise at the park, the sun was up before 6am so it rendered that moot. but it was beautiful nonetheless. luckily i was able to get a breakfast, otherwise i would have been starving. but i started walking and i was the first in the park. i had a choice of three directions. as usual i took the left hand path. but as i was walking i had a strange epiphany. while i chose the left hand path, i realized that there was no path. i will explain no more. it was not until later that i realized that the path i took was reputed to be dangerous, because of some robberies. it was a long and isolated path. it took about 20 minutes to reach the first ruin. it was nothing much to look at, so i moved on. there were howler monkeys up in the trees. but it was difficult to photgraph them. i have an attractive photo of monkey butt. i may post that too. they make this crazy sound. when i first heard them in palenque, mexico, i was wondering why they were broadcasting dinosaur/monster sounds at the park. it took me a minute of confusion before i realized they were howler monkeys.

it was quite a long day because there were quite a few pyramids to climb and ruins to explore. when i climbed the highest and last of the bunch i had an amazing view of the jungle treetops and the other pyramids poking out above the canopy. but as i was trying to take a picture of all the temple tops a thick black smoke started to obscure the view. i could not figure it out. so i decided to investigate. there was music too, which was supposedly forbidden in the park. when i approached the center again where there are the twin pyramids, there was a large gathering of people dressed in traditional mayan clothing. in the sacrificial alter in the middle a huge fire was burning. there were many priests around performing some kind of ritual with the participants. the people would kneel and the preist would come up to them say a prayer for them, drink some alcohol and spray it on the person on all four sides. then they would get up and circle around the fire. which was an extremely hot fire i would have you know, combined with a very hot day. the preists would also throw candles and alcohol into the fire. when i arrived i had about two hours to see the last third, or more, of the park. but i ended up watching this ceremony, it was far more significant that any ruin. it ended about the same time i was supposed to leave, so i walked out of the park with all the great mass of participants. it was a good day. but the night was another story. there was definately nothing to do in el remate. it was hard to walk too. i needed to take off my boots and give my toe some breathing room.

    the next morning i decided to go to belize. i only had to walk about a kilometer to the crossroads and catch the first bus that went by to the border. it did not take long. it not too bad of a trip, not too long nor crowded. but it was strange to walk across the belize/guatemala border. suddenly i went from spanish speaking guatemala to english speaking belize. i saw black people for the first time in ages, it was kind of a culture shock. listening to reggae in the taxi to the bus stop was also a bit surreal. i am afraid i really did not enjoy belize that much. i was not in the mood for a carribean country, i was here for latin america. and it was strange... i had never thought of the countries that i had passed thorugh as third world, but suddenly i felt it in when i got to belize city. it is difficult to explain.