Big Guatemalan Spiders. As big as my hand.


Yeah, so I'm back from Guatemala. Crazy stuff happened down there. it was a really nice trip, a great experience. brief highlights.

6 days and 150 kilometers hiking in the Peten jungle. We saw the unrestored Mayan ruins of El Mirador, Nakbe and Tintal. They were very impressive. I also learned alot about jungles. For one, if you try to wash cloths, they will not dry out no matter how long you air them out. They just turn musty. Also, it is very difficult to stay clean. I believe by the third day my crotch was rotting. Perhaps my smartest decisions was to not bring shorts to the jungle. I ended up ditching my pants by the second day and just went around in my underwear for the rest of the trip (and yes, I changed them, once).

Went to Tikal for two days, then took the bus to Guatemala City, then from Guatemala City to Hueheutanango, then to Todos Santos, my uncle's village. About twenty minutes into the bus ride to Heuheutanango, four guys in the back of the bus ran forward. One was waving a gun around, yelling "assulto" or something. They robbed everyone on the bus and searched everyone's bags. It's my first armed robbery. I know the first question you're probably asking is if I soiled myself. The answer is no. Seriously though, I came out pretty good. The guy who searched me didn't find my stash of money that I slid up to my belly, so I only lost a swiss army knife and 10 Quetzales (~$1.20). My uncle lost about 300 Quetzales (~$40). The best part about the story is that after the robbery, the bus just kept going to Heuheutanango. We never went to the police station or anything. Only in Guatemala.

Todos Santos was fantastic. It's an indiginous village, and one of only a couple villages in Guatemala where the men have retained their traditional dress. My uncle lives there as a subsistance farmer, and speaks the local Mayan language Mam. So it was a fun time. We helped tare down the local hotel.


Bathwater, Peten style.

On a side note, we would go down to swamps like these at dusk to look for boa constrictors. It was fun.