El Mirador Part II

Ahem...El Mirador Part II...after a day of walking through the ruins of El Mirador (remember to watch the Nat Geo Special, these ruins are old, they´re so old) we hit camp and heard the news. We were running dangerously low on COFFEE. Walk 135km...sure, sleep on the ground with blankets that smell of mule piss...ok, tip toe around camp at night careful not to step on one of the 3 very poisonous snakes in the jungle...not a problem, zip the tent tight to not allow one or many of the 1000s of flying bugs into the sleeping quarters...done, no meat for 5 days...simple, BUT run out of coffee...not acceptable. After confronting our guide, Raul, he explained that he too has but one passion in life, coffee, and produced two huge bags of percolated coffee. I´d never seen this stuff before, but its a step down from instant but more than 3 days walk and a 2.5 hour car ride from the nearest cafe con leche and no one was complaining. Crisis averted.

We could now turn our attention to Day 4 and our hike to a set of ruins called Nakbe, where we would have lunch, and then walk another 2 hours into the afternoon to an old Chiclero campground. (The Chicleros were the badasses back in the mid and late 1800s that were milking huge trees for their sap which was then sold for...chewing gum. They would hack at the tree bark with their machetes in an X-shape patern and let the samp run into jars.). In fact, it was the Chicleros who led archeologists like, Dick Hansen, to many of the Mayan ruins of the Peten regions. They knew of these buried sites whereabouts long before the professors, universities and archeological teams.

Nakbe was a smaller (in terms of height and bredth) set of ruins, but up on top of its highest pyramid we could see pyramids of Mirador and Tintal in the distance. We were standing atop their highest pyramids days before looking at Nakbe, and now we were able to see just how far we´d come. Awesome sight and a unique accomplishment that not many get to experience.

After feasting like vultures on bean & cheese, jelly and sardine sandwiches...sounds good, right...we hiked to the Chiclero campground. Upon arrival, both Alfonso (assistant) and Alfredo (cook) set up the tents & started on dinner, Angel´(mule handler) took our buddy Yelmer and his friends for their ramon leaves and swamp water and we milled around the coffee pot (literal pot on campfire) waiting for the water to boil. This was the routine, and we all settled down in our sweat & stink from that day´s hike. However, on Day 4, we were treated to the greatest of jungle expedition surprises...a 20-minute deluge of rain. We stripped off the clothes, danced, whooped, used the tarp over the tents to create mini waterfalls and someone broke out the soap and shampoo. Raul, Alfonso and Alfredo watched from under the tent tarp, dry, no doubt, thinking to themselves that not a one of has what it takes to be in the bush for any length of time. No doubt, they worried that one of us would breakdown, or get sick, or get bit by a snake, or bit by a bullet ant, or cry, or whatever and watching us so excited by water and soap and wet clothes, cemented that notion for the rustic Guatemalans.

Curious things happen with insect life after a rainstorm in the rainforest. We got a glimpse in Costa Rica when the insects got all crazy after a couple days of down pour. They come from all over...trees, sky, ground, bushes. The buglife after our jungle rainshower and all through the night was intensified by a factor of, I don´t know, a bizillion! We are talking a carpet of bugs of all types around the campfire and around the tents. There were so many it was hysterical, in a good way. You couldn´t avoid, we became like pieces of furniture...16 bug ottomans, eating dinner and scratching.

Rainwater fresh & dusted of creepy crawlers, everyone slept soundly that night, EXCEPT for yours truly. While Joy and the rest of the knuckleheads all dreamt of sugarplums and shit, I was jammed between a one tree root in my hip and one tree root on my neck...thanks, Alfonso. No worries, we were always up at 430 anyway, and I counted the night hours till gloaming.

Day 5 started awkwardly. In trying to squeeze myself out of our kindergartner-size tent, sliding my feet perfectly into flip flops so as not to touch the slightly damp ground, I fell completely into our slumbering, Norwegian friends´tent and, thereby, onto our slumbering Norwegian friends. Nice alarm clock - the gangly, bearded-man smash.

Another computer session comes to a close...El Mirador Part III coming soon.

Hasta la Pasta,
CP