The day after the day before (the hike down Acatenango) was scheduled to end up at Tikal Inn. The legs of Fardau, Folkert and Susan had other plans for the day; no climbing mountains, temples and stairs, neither going down of them and actually … no walking at all. In the end, the minds won, but it sure wasn’t an easy badly. Fardau was getting up the stairs in the morning like a super old lady. Stair by stair, firmly holding the bar, she got up to the kitchen. Most fortunately her legs warmed up a bit and walking went better.

After breakfast and packing what was needed for the 2 day tour we were picked up by a ‘taxi’. It was arranged via the owner of the Home Exchange house, that is one of the other positive things about HE, the owners can help you out as they know their way around their town/country. Plenty of time at the airport, where we had the ‘routine’ hassle with our backs. We had to check in 2 (compartments in the plane where too small) and weight was an issue too. We managed to solve that issue without they need for extra pay. In Flores the bus to Yaxha was already waiting for us. Since we got rather hungry, at was 13:00 ours and we desperately needed food, first a – not so quick – stop at one of Flores finest for lunch. About 16:00 we arrived at Yaxha and the guide toured us around to the site. We walked through ancient Yaxha, most temples and house are covered by trees, but you can see where there is a building. Still a lot of digging to do. We could walk up a temple … Susan stayed at ground level for good reasons, Fardau got at 75% and decided not to take the steep climb to the top. The rest of us managed to get up an enjoy the few and the sound of the hauler monkeys. Before sunset we went to the highest temple, all six got up, to see the sun setting. The show was cancelled as the main character (the Sun), took a day off. Instead of that we did get a minor light show with clouds moving a bit around. It was nice and better than what I saw at ‘God’s window on the earth’ (South Africa) where the window was closed (fog). The hike back to the car, time for the 3 pairs of legs to take the rest of the day off, just a walk to bed would be needed … and dinner … let’s not forget that.

I had purchased the tickets for Tikal at a bank in Antigua, that seemed to be the procedure, and everyone had their ticket in their passport. No problem, until I asked Fardau where her passport was, she hadn’t hand it over to me. Big problem, no ticket to Tikal = no visit to Tikal and … no passport = stuck in Flores. Stress level went up. We checked every bag … no passport. Then it must be in the bus was our conclusion. Lucky us that we had booked all trips via the same person. They told us that if the passport is in the bus they would find it. After half an hour of stress we could relax and walked to the entrance of Tikal. At that time, it wasn’t that busy at all. We entered the park with an hour head start to all tourist that came in by nus form Flores and Belize. A major advantage of staying close to Tikal. Tikal is a lot larger city and to get to downtown took some walking. It was great, the guide explained everything well and we could walk around by ourselves, awesome to walk through the houses and see how it all looked like, ages ago. Off course we got on a few temples … al be it not all of us. It is a great view when you are on top of a temple and look around to see a few more temples with their head above the treetops. At the last temple, Fardau and Folkert barely managed to get up, they went down walking backwards. As it turned out there is transport for elderly and disabled people with family at Tikal, a sort off bus that drives up and down. It just arrived again at the main square when we got there to get back to the entrance. 4 of us went on the bus, it was close to 40 (100+ F), to warm for Silke. Jesse and I walked back with the guide and took short cut, or better a smaller track. That was cool to do.

After lunch or bus, with passport, arrived and got us back to Flores.