Wildlife Sanctuary Hike

They are around...just not during the day time

Our guide rolled up a leaf to make a whistle...and TA DA this guy came crawling out of a hole in the ground.....Crazy!!

They have night cameras around the trail -so they can catch pictures like this of the jaguars-since they come out at night...not during the day when all us tourist are hiking around ;)

a partial paw print ...can you see it???

Almond Beach Resort near Hopkins

Here we are in front of our room at Almond Beach. We stay here from November 15-19th. The room was called Starfruit....again...I had a name issue and occasionally call it the Starfish room....getting chuckles out of the staff....

On our arrival day the 15th we walked into our room with the beautiful hibiscus floweres tucked in all the towels and in an arrangement on the bed...beautiful!

This dock was not too far from our room. They had a few of these...they are where we caught the boat to go out and snorkle one day. At night they were lit up...the first night we were there...a couple had dinner out there.

Inside the Cave

We had to paddle upstream in our tubes and then every so often our guide, Andre, would lead us up into different caverns deep in the cave. It was DARK, we saw lots of beautiful stalactites and stalagmites and also many bats, even the one vampire bat that lives in the cave, cave crickets, and scorpion spiders, ewww.

We got to see broken pieces of pottery, old fire rings, and this huge pot that was mostlikely used for water or food storage by the Mayans....there is a lot of Mayan history in the caves and why they used them...very interesting. Then before we headed out of the cave we got to eat a picnic lunch...very nice!! On the way out, we at one point had all of our headlamps off and just floated down one section of the river....wow!!! AMAZINGLY crazy!!

Cave Tubing

November 15th, on our move from one resort to the other....we stopped at Caves Branch Resort, where we hooked up with our guide and 4 others to go on a cave tubing expedition. This is the Cave entrance(don't remember the name of it)

San Ignacio

Night view from the restaurant (which was outside on a covered porch) It overlooked the pool out into the lights of town.

This is the hill you walked to get to and from the resort...you could get a taxi..but our first ride up the hill, the driver was slipping the tires near the top....so we chose to just walk it.

November 12-15 we stayed in a Town called

San Ignacio. The resort, Cahal Pech, where we were at- was on the hill above town. We got to stay in one of the thatched roofed cabanas. Ours was called the Bakin Pot....I messed up and called it the Bacon Pit and they all laughed at me.

It was somewhat still of their slow season...so there were only about 20 people staying in the whole resort....made it an even more laid back and very relaxed, personalized stay!

Tikal- Guatemala

November 13, 2010

Here are a few pictures of Tikal- the largest Mayan Ruin in the area.

We are sitting in what would have been the "king and queen throne"

Apple Cider Making

At Church we had an Apple Cider making party on the 31st......I can't figure out how to turn the picture the right way (sorry) It was quite the process and lots of people helped to make it..as a group we ended up with 62 gallons..... it was good!