Mud, Mosquitos and Mayans

"So...aside from the whole, 'running out of food thing'...you guys would recommend me right??"

Hmmm, where to begin. Overall it was a great trip, definitely a once in a lifetime experience and we met some great guys, would I do it a second time though, never. The above quote was made by the 'middle man', the guy who took us to the isolated starting town, bought all the food, arranged everything with the guide etc, then picked us back up. We didn't actually run out of food until the very last day, although we came quite close by the 5th day. For the 5th day we ate leftovers from the previous night's dinner for breakfast, and had noodles with a little sauce for the 4th time. Heres how the whole trip broke down:

Day 1: ~20km of hiking, got there late and hiked through mud that ranged from your ankles to your knees, very tiring, very wet, very dirty, very frustrating. Due to our late departure and the necessity of making it to the camp, we hiked the last hour or so in the pitch black with nothing but mine and Jason's headlamps to point out the muddy path. The headlamps created a freaky atmosphere though, as you would look out into the surrounding jungle you could see literally hundreds of little tiny sparkling spider eyes staring back at you, quite comforting!

Day 2: ~32km of hiking, pretty brutal day, fast paced, lots of mud, but we reached El Mirador and it was worth it.

Day 3: Toured El Mirador, climbed the two highest and oldest temples in the Mayan world, our guide knew everything pretty much so it was awesome. Unlike the other sites, Tikal, Palenque etc, theres nobody out there, so you can pretty much do as you please, could climb up all the temples, handle the artifacts, whatever!

Day 4: ~15km of hiking, good hike, fast paced, relatively dry, made it to Ncbae, another neighbouring mayan city. Went into some tunnels and our guide once again gave us the full package, almost too much to see.

Day 5: ~40km of hiking, long day, wading through jungle swamps and pools, made it back to one of the starting camps in time to meet another group who had attempted El Mirador but failed. Unfortunately, instead of being able to gloat, we merily...borrowed their food for breakfast and dinner!

Day 6: ~12km, extremely muddy, really didnt care though due to it being the homestretch, just wanted the pain to end. Finally made it back to town and proceeded to drink mucho cervezas while waiting for our late middle man guy.

The jungle wasnt totally what I expected. Ive mentioned the mud already, but really its the thing that just won't leave my mind, that and the bugs. There werent a lot of points that you could simply stop moving due to the constant presence of bugs. Although I was better off than most (with jason and Martin taking the brunt of the mosquito fury) it was still a constant annoyance and a flurry of bites, ranging from mosquitos to flies to fire ants (those being my least favourite). I saw bigger spiders than I ever knew existed, the two worst being the huge furry black guy we found last night in our camp and the monstrous weird crab spiders that we found while looking through a mayan tomb, Im not sure how big across they were, probably 7 inches or so, needless to say I was extremely calm and relaxed around them...The monkeys were great, saw them quite a bit, swinging around through the trees and watching us, at times they seemed to be plotting something but it was impossible to tell, we had hoped to see a Jaguar but no luck. Our guide, Alex, was awesome. Kid was 18 and hopes to be an archeologist one day, something that I dont think will be a problem for him. Always in a good mood, very informative (from what I could pick up through my cracked spanish translation!) and just all around a great guy. We ended up going with 3 other guys, Chris, Dave and Martin. We had been with them all back in the San Cristobal hostel, but really got to know them during the 6 days. Great guys and Im glad they were with us to lighten up the trip. Anyhow, Im too tired to keep going on about it (we've been going to bed at 7pm every night and getting up at 4ish!), so I'll let you use your imagination to fill in any blanks, just picture ~115km of trails, lots of ruins, lots of mud, lots of bugs and constantly damp and dirty clothes with 6 out of place but stubborn gringos mixed in and you'll get the idea, Adios!

Pictures! Really didnt turn out that well, and after looking at them, im actually pretty dissapointed, but oh well! First shot is up one of the bigger temples, the really tall ones all look pretty similar to that, very cool how they just pop out of the jungle. Second one is what our feet and legs looked like the entire time, thats not even that muddy actually, just a regular shot!