Flores, Guatemala

hello all. Flores, where i am now, is a nice little island in a lake connected via bridge to the mainland. most important is that our hotel has a laundry washing station because all my socks and boxers are dirty.

3 nights ago we were in livingston, where i experienced three very cool new things, one of which i slightly regret. and that would be the skittle shot i took, which was vodka mixed with i think liquified skittles. i chose grape, it not being my favorite flavor and therefore not such a loss if it ruined grape skittles for me forever. fortunately it wasn´t that bad, but yeah. the other two cool things i did was to meet a guy from guyana (which id ashamedly never heard of, tho im pretty certain he was used to that) named sven who was also jewish (and claimed to possibly be the only jewish guyanan) and spoke patua aka caribbean english. and he looked exactly like a pirate, with a big gold hoop earring and long curly black hair and everything. and wore huge white rimmed stunna shades that looked absolutely rediculous on him. he made a very funny remark though, noting the interesting circumstances in that we were a german and a jew travelling together. he said hed write a song about it. the third cool thing i did was finally listen to live garifuna music, which involves two hand drums, maracas, a turtle shell played with sticks, and a conch shell. and then chanting and dancing. it was freakin awesome. for some reason all the guys wanted to play drums and not the conch, so i picked it up and gave it a try. the idea is the same as trombone, so it didn´t give me too much trouble, and soon enough i was playing along with them. crazy crazy. that was a fun night!

the next day we left up the river to a wonderful little hotel type place in the jungle right on the riverside. fantastic characteristics: perfect water for swimming, rope swing, bangin food, apparently indiginously-made sauna, a possibly 5-person hammock that was the most comfortable ever. the rope swing was a bit of a sore spot for us, since we were trying to figure out how to do dives from it but ended up with a score sheet of about 7 belly flops and 0 dives. i am proud to say i landed mostly head first a couple times though. as for the food, it is amazing to me what a difference it makes in a place when theres really good food. among other things, i had fruit crepes, pancakes, a whole pizza, and -i absolutely couldn´t believe this when i saw it - schnitzle. Nee, dont worry, it was no where near to yours. The sauna looked like a little igloo with a hobbit door. there was a wood stove on the inside that opened up to the outside which is where you fed it from. and then there was a hose inside for steam, and a spray bottle with some minty stuff in it to make it nice to breathe. and then if it got too hot the river was about 5 steps away to jump into. and trust me it got too hot haha. hands down the most intense heat and humidity ive ever experienced, it actually hurt to breathe in the air. but man was it cool, and we slept like babies that night.

okay, well that was longer than i meant it to be, seeing as im getting up tomorrow to catch the bus to tikal at 4 30 in the morning. some crazy scheme to beat the crowds and it had better work. Hope all is good with everyone. only a month and a half more of blogging, what will you do when it ends?!

much love
gus