Day 12 - The road to Peten

Well, folks, here we were, headed off to Tikal, which was going to be the best part of the trip, and we forgot our camera charger. Ugh. So, we tried to ration our photo taking...

Tuesday morning, we left around 7am, on the road to Tikal. Our plan was to pretty much drive straight through, stopping to eat. But Sergio saw a sign that said, "Quirigua" and off he turned. Never give Sergio a plan if you actually want him to stick to one.

But it turned out to be pretty cool. Quirigua is an archaeological site where they have found very well preserved stellae, which are large stones with carvings on them that list the great deeds of the Mayan kings that were ruling at the time. Take a look:

Later in Tikal we saw stellae, but they were carved from much softer stone, were older, and almost completely worn, so you couldn't see any markings. I appreciated this detour more after I could compare with what we saw in Tikal.

After Quirigua, we stopped for lunch in Rio Dulce, where we'd be returning a couple days later. Sergio ordered the local dish of tapado, which was so yummy. It's a seafood soup made with coconut milk and who know what other yummy spices. Of course, tapado leaves you anything but tapado after a few hours...

Our final stop that day was Santa Elena/ Flores, a town about an hour from Tikal. Our hotel was across the bridge from the Isla del Flores, a small island covered by a small town. After a short nap in our hotel (although Regis and Davicito had slept the whole car ride, so I'm not quite sure why they needed a nap...), we drove over to the island and had went bar hopping. Well, not really. But we decided we weren't hungry enough for dinner, so we had licuados and lemonade. Ahh, we will miss our drinks once we get back to the States. Everything freshly made, cold and super delicious. David's large glasses of lemonade end up being shots of lemonade for him... We went to a couple different restaurants for our drinks - including one that Neto recommended where the owner plays his guitar and sings. It was nice :). I had a pineapple licuado en agua, ahh, so so so delicious.