Tikal and the raining bus to Antigua

We’ve spent a lot of time in buses over the last week, travelling all the way from Ambergris Caye down to the beautiful town of Antigua in Guatemala.

We stopped off along the way at El Ramate to visit Tikal – the most ‘Indiana Jones-ish’ of the ruins we’ve been to so far. The kids needed far less encouragement to walk around the place as there was much more of a sense of exploration through the jungle shrouded ruins than the ‘walk, look and click’ ruins in Yukatan. This was just as well, as they were much more spread out and half an hour of walking was needed just to arrive at the main plaza.

The eleven hour double decker ‘deluxe’ bus from Tikal to Antigua was not quite as the name suggested. The meaning of ‘deluxe’ is of course relative to the country that you are in, and in this case it meant that the upstairs windows directly in front of our first row seats were held together with pieces of wood and what looked like chewing gum. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t particularly weather resistant, and when we past through the first of several thunder storms, poor Limo who was sleeping at my feet at the front of the bus, woke up with water streaming down on his head. All of our onboard bags also took a swim, and I could have used an umbrella as well.

Antigua is very well known as the place to go in Latin America to study spanish. With it’s low cost, cobbled streets, cosmopolitan entertainment selection, and stunning backdrop of volcanoes, it’s not surprising that it attracts enough international students to fill up the 130 english schools that are here.

We chose one of the larger and more reputable schools ‘Instituto Anteguena’, which we’ve found to be a very ‘no frills’ experience in all respects. The teacher that we have has about 25 years experience teaching spanish which is good in some respects, but also means that her teaching method is also 25 years old and very paper based rather than the conversational style that we prefer. Our host mother is also a lovely lady, but the meals are very basic and require quite a bit of supplementing to get some balance. Living without ready access to internet is also taking some getting use to.

Still, it’s been a worthwhile stop and the town, some good excursions, and other students have made the place a great place to hang out so far.

The boat ride from Ambergris Caye to Belize City

Our hut in El Remate close to the Tikal ruins

It was pretty cosy with all four of us sleeping here

Angry faces while waiting for the bus to the ruins for an hour

What better time to fell a tree than in the morning when the tourists are coming… another 1/2 hour delay to clear it.

‘The lonely planet says that the temple should be right about here…’

…four hours later

(not really)

We worked out how to use the auto timer at last

The kids look like they’d just about had enough after climbing Temple IV

But the panoramic jungle views were well worth the effort

We’re still not sure what these are

Cruising with the family seemed the thing to do on a Sunday evening in the enchanting island town of Flores, where we were waiting for the bus to Antigua. The most we saw while waiting for the bus was a family of four on a single bike. Quite often the kids were steering!

After a stormy bus ride, we arrived in beautiful Antigua to learn some more spanish. The Volcan de Agua below wasn’t visible for the first couple of days and our introduction to it was during an evening lightning storm behind it, with the lightning strikes spectacularly revealing its silhouette.