We had come to Flores, Guatemala to visit Tikal, one of the largest Mayan ruins in Central America. In our sprint through the last several countries, we hadn’t had time to stop and see any Mayan ruins. But we had been told time and time again that if we only had time to visit one, we should visit Tikal.

Lauren had been here before, three years ago with Katie and Meredith. She regaled me with stories about their trip, including running down steep Mayan stairs to make it to a bathroom in time. I was hoping my experience would be a little different.

By the time we finished checking into our hotel, we had already bought our bus tickets to see the ruins. Feeling accomplished, we relaxed on our balcony overlooking the lake before heading to a lake-front restaurant for dinner. The restaurant was on a dock jetting over the water, and had cute tables with functioning lamps, fantastic views and a nice breeze. A cute band was playing, and Lauren and I indulged in Hawaiian pizza.

The bus was supposed to pick us up the next morning at 10am. We had been told that it would be a new minivan like the one we had been in the day before on our final ride to the hotel, but the one that showed up instead was an older, ricketier red van that looked like a retired matatu. After picking us up 10 minutes late, it drove around for another half an hour picking up other tourists. By the time we got on the road, we were way behind schedule.

Immediately before getting on the highway, the driver pulled over into a gas station. But instead of getting gas, he bought a liter of Rotella oil and poured it into the engine. Great, I thought, an oil leak to top it off.

The bus struggled up the winding roads, the clutch groaning every time he shifted.

We finally arrived, and as we were getting off the bus, Lauren asked the driver where we should meet the buses that were leaving tonight.

“There are no buses leaving tonight,” he told her.

Confused, she asked him where the buses that would be returning would depart from. Again, he insisted that no buses would be leaving tonight and then started ignoring her altogether.

Another driver piped up that buses left at 2pm, 3pm, 4pm, 5pm and 6pm… which we already knew. ‘Yes,’ Lauren responded, ‘But from where?’

The guy finally answered it would be in the same spot the let us off.

Lauren and I paid for our tickets and went to figure out our path on the huge map of Tikal. We decided to take a northerly route towards the highest temple and then make our way through more main areas on our way back.

After walking for fifteen minutes, I saw a sign marking the first temple we were looking for: Complejo Q. It looked like a huge mound of dirt. ‘This is it?!’ I thought. Then I walked around the other side.

There is was. The huge staircase with stones that looked like seats or tombstones in front. Neither our guidebook nor the signs marking the site were very clear on what the building was for. The sign did say that normally these types of structures had drawings on them to mark some kind of activity or happening, but that this one had none on it. ‘What could that mean?’ the sign oddly asked, but offered no answer.

We kept walking spotting a few more small ruins. It started getting really hot, so I zipped of my pants legging and downed more water.

Suddenly, Lauren and I heard the loud, fierce cries of Howler Monkeys. Several Central American tourist guys took off into the forest to see if they could see them. Before I could stop her, Lauren ran after them, and I ran after her. We were traipsing through unmarked paths in the woods running towards very angry sounding monkeys. I was not happy.

One of the guys quickly spotted the monkeys. Apparently two separate groups of monkeys were having a territorial fight, though for now they were only fighting with “words.” Lauren and I snapped photos and tried to get their screams on video tape. Lauren kept trying to find a way to get closer to get a better shot, but I thought I could see enough from where I was.

The monkeys finally noticed another group of tourists coming up to see what was going on, and they started calming down. Lauren and I hiked back to the main road to continue our walk to Temple IV, the large temple overseeing the whole area.

On the way, we found another set of ruins called the Temple of Windows. We went up to check it out and were disappointed to see that most of it was blocked off. It seemed some stupid tourists had decided that the best thing to do at this particular thousand-plus year old ruin was carve their names into the stones, so the authorities had to block it off and remind people that carving one’s name into a ruin isn’t very nice.

After another 20 minute walk, we finally saw the temple we were looking for peak out of the trees. We quickly noticed that it was under construction. At first we were afraid that we wouldn’t be able to climb up it, but we found that the steps were still open.

Lauren had many times told me about these stairs. “Straight out of Swiss Family Robinson,” she had said. And they were. They were like odd wooden ladders, not always well connected (liability doesn’t seem to have the same meaning outside the U.S.) and very steep. We slowly made our way up.

When we reached the top, the view was spectacular. Because of the construction, we couldn’t walk around very far from the ladder, but we could see several other Mayan ruins peaking up above the tree line.

After we made our way back down, Lauren and I both started getting leg cramps. “Surely we’re not this weak,” we both complained, since we had been jogging recently and felt pretty in shape. But the leg cramps followed us for much of the day and we were sore for one or two days afterwards.

We made our way back to the Gran Plaza, checking out the view from the top of another tower before exploring other parts of the ruins. I was starting to get extremely hot. The sun was glaring straight down on us, but Lauren kept climbing more and more stairs to different areas. I tried to remind her that we’d have to climb back down every staircase that she was climbing up, but she was on a mission to find a perfect shot.

At one point, I sat down in the shade and refused to go any further.

“You don’t want to see the ruins over there?” Lauren asked.

“No,” I said. “I’ve seen enough. They’re Mayan. They’re ruined. I got it.”

We headed back to the entrance, and did some quick shopping and postcard mailing before heading to the parking lot to grab a bus back.

When we arrived, the buses weren’t where the drivers said there would be. We asked the driver of another company and he pointed us to the back of the lot. When we got there, we were saddened to see that the dumpy old red van was still having engine problems and the driver was still the same. The van wouldn’t crank. And it was lined up to go next.

Lauren and I debated waiting until the next bus, and all the tourists waiting with us huddled around a working bus, hoping that it would go instead. Finally some guys pushed the van while the driver tried to crank it, and when it finally cranked, the driver sped away. All of the tourists stood around wondering what bus would actually be going now.

Finally one of us asked one of the other drivers for the company which bus was next.

“The red one,” he said. Then he and his friends erupted in laughter.

We looked around and saw that the red one had pulled up to the front and was loading passengers. Lauren and I were royally annoyed at the drivers who were making all of us the butt of their joke, but we felt like we should just try and and get back instead of waiting for the next bus.

The van made it back okay, probably cause it was mostly downhill, until it finally pulled into a gas station. The driver didn’t say anything and just got out. Finally someone tapped on my shoulder and said that we all needed to get out and switch vans. I’m not sure how he knew that since there wasn’t an announcement, but we got into a nicer van and took it the last 10 minutes back to Flores.

When we got to Flores, Lauren and I were in desperate need for an ATM. Exhausted, we walked around for half an hour before discovering that despite being one of Guatemala’s central tourist cities, there were no ATMs and all the banks were closed. Our option was to take a tuk-tuk to the next city and get money or exchange dollars at a very bad rate.

So we spent another half an hour trying to find a tuk-tuk, all of whom insisted on charging us 5 cordobas for one of us to go or 10 for two of us. This math never worked for Lauren and I — it’s the same distance and the same amount of gas regardless of the number of people. But the drivers wouldn’t negotiate so Lauren went by herself.

When she came back to the hotel, she had picked up a couple of beers and we lounged on our balcony, reading and relaxing as the sun went down.

That night we went out to take a look at all the cute shops along the main street and get dinner. We looked for a restaurant, but couldn’t find anything that compared to the location of (and we were craving the pizza) so we went back for round II. We went back to the hotel to pack and get ready to leave for Belize the next day. By early afternoon tomorrow, we estimated, we’d be swimming in the water at one of our favorite islands in the Caribbean.