On to Tikal!

On Saturday, before breakfast, we all piled back into our boat and headed to Siete Altares (Seven Altars). It's just a little ways north along the coast from Livingston.

Siete Altares is a series of waterfalls that flow down from the mountains into the ocean. It's really beautiful and the water is great. There are also a bunch of mosquitoes there, but as long as you're in the water, they're not a problem.

The last waterfall that you hike up to is the tallest. It's maybe 20 feet tall ... but, I'm' not very good at judging distances. We all jumped off the top! Everyone except Courtney (whose name I was informed last night is actually Connie - sorry).

After probably an hour or two there, we boated back to our cabanas and had some frijoles and juevos revueltos (scrambled eggs) for breakfast. The family that cooked for us fried up some kind of delicious bread too - almost like sopaipillas.

The boat ride back to Rio Dulce was mucho mas relajante (much more relaxing) than the ride to Livingston. It's really beautiful country too - the river is surrounded by verdant mountains part of the way between Livingston and Rio Dulce.

Halfway through the boat ride to Rio Dulce, we stopped at a little cabana in front of which was a hot spring! Kinda cool, but it smelled so strongly of sulfur that none of us opted to hop in.

Back in Rio Dulce, we grabbed lunch at Bruno's before we got back in the van. Then it was off to the hot waterfall! There's a finca (farm) somewhere out in the middle of nowhere where there's a hot spring that's a waterfall! At the bottom of the waterfall, a cold stream meets the hot water. It was a lot of fun to swim around right where the cold and hot water met. A few of us also climbed up to the top of the waterfall and lounged in some hot pools. Unfortunately, we had to climb back down - this waterfall wasn't for jumping off of. Probably cause it's about three times higher than the other one.

We all piled back into the van and headed to a little town about 20 minutes outside of Tikal. On the way we stopped in Flores for about half an hour to have a look around. Flores is a pretty neat city - it's super touristy, but it's on an island in a lake. Unfortunately, I was kinda robbed in Flores on Monday so I'm not a huge fan of the place ... but more about that later.

Exhausted, we arrived at our hotel outside of Tikal and crashed after dinner. I was kinda excited cause there were two fans in our room - one for each of us! There was also a tv that purportedly had cable. Much to my dismay, someone had cut the power cord on one of the fans! Why would someone do something so senseless and evil?! Also, the tv didn't work. But that wasn't a big deal since we were too tired to watch anything anyway.

We needed to get plenty of sleep cause the next day was gonna start at 5am!