Sorry I had to cut the last blog short - had to jump onto a tiny plane, which turned out to be big enough to accommodate the 14 of us, plus two unfortunate members of the public, as well as a pilot or two. We were given ear plugs in our tiny cardboard box, which were most welcome considering the noise which emanated.
Earlier in the day, we visited a market, not a tourist market like the one at Chichicastenago, but a local market, where locals do their shopping. It was an interesting experience, with lines and lines of women selling vegetables, many wearing their beautiful traditional cloth, all of which has slight variations. The local population was doing its shopping here, whilst we wandered round, gazing at mutant-sized cabbages and smiling at people.
Most of the vegetable stalls were manned (for want of a better word) by women, many of whom were breastfeeding and selling tomatoes at the same time. There were a lot of smaller children running around. Others had babies secured to their backs with beautiful cloth, evident only from the tiny feet sticking out of one end of the material. Work doesn't stop here when a woman has a child; there is certainly no maternity leave - she carries on running her stall. Needs must.
We stopped at a Mayan archaeological site, hence the name of the previous blog entry, where there were steep steps, because the Mayans had long legs. We learnt about how Mayans built their complexes according to the nature of the cosmos. We saw a hole which Manuel described as 'the belly button of the earth', which was where the Mayans would offer incense and light candles etc.
That visit was a few hours ago, but seems like months ago. Fast forward to now, and I am sitting in the reception of a stunning complex, surrounded by incomparable noises of the Guatemalan jungle. There are chirruping cicadas, howler monkeys, the whirring of the fan above my head, and a million insect noises. This is mosquito central, and I am coated in my new fragrance - Deet Femme - it's not exactly Clinique Happy, but it does the job. It is past 10.30pm and the heat is astonishing. I don't think I've been in a climate quite like this since Timbuktu 2002, when the heat was so close, you could hardly move. But somehow, one does, on a camel, into the desert heat.
Our tiny plane touched down; I had a stabbing pain below my left ear throughout the flight, so spent most of the time in the brace position, which made it better, although wasn't very sociable for my neighbours. But they got over it. The airport was tiny, and we were met by Miguel the guide, and driver Saolo, who drove us in an enormous bus, to buy water, then here to the hotel. En route to the supermarket, we passed Pizza Hut, again, globalisation at its worse - we are in Guatemala for goodness sake!
We are staying in a series of little bungalows and the complex has two lagoons, one of which has a resident crocodile, which Miguel tells us we can watch eat breakfast tomorrow, when we are having breakfast. There is a swimming pool, which will be blissful to plunge into tomorrow, as long as it's definitely a swimming pool, not the lagoon with the resident crocodile. 'Lagoon'. What a great word eh? I don't use it very often. There aren't many lagoons in Plumstead, that's probably why.
We've been reading tweets today from our friends at Girlguiding's Trainer Conference in a place called Wyboston - hello to you if you have been there today. Pip and I would be there, if we weren't in Guatemala. Hope it has gone well and that you have made new friends, and kept the old.
Off to climb the pyramid tomorrow. Night night!
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