The Gallivanting Grasshopper: Goodbyes Don't Get Easier -- Yaxha and Guatemala City, Guatemala

I'm starting this post from my new home in Antigua, Guatemala. My room is small, painted white, and sports a single barred window through which just the right amount of light passes. The desk at which I sit is wooden and decorated with a doll made of painted corn husks and a small wooden block that reads, "Follow Your Dreams." With arrows pointing in both directions.

Now that's the problem, isn't it? It's not that I'm bad at following my dreams. It's that I have so many damn dreams pulling me in different directions, that I can't seem to stay focused on any one thing long enough to actually get good at it.

I've unpacked my overtaxed Fat Ellie, and she sits deflated and rejected on the floor between my dresser and my laundry basket (I have a laundry basket now. That's how settled I am. Holy freaking bananas). She seems rather sullen about this change of events, but I'm pretty sure she'll get used to it.

I know I will.

My bed is still a rumpled mess of white sheets, blue and orange blankets, an incredibly soft pillow, and Teal Cecile (so I can play sad songs as soon as I wake up in the morning). An empty yellow coffee cup lingers on the nightstand, evidence that I've had coffee the way I like it this morning.

Finally. I'm in a place for long enough that I can make coffee exactly how I want to drink it.

A cookie tin full of flashcards accompanies my empty coffee cup, as does a wooden pelican and a small lamp with its shade askew.

Eybi, the Honduran mother of the home, sits in the living room, working on her computer. I shared my coffee with her this morning and she brought me a tamale from the market. We're getting along very well indeed.

My two weeks of traipsing about Guatemala with John and Cathy ended last Sunday. But before we parted ways, we had several more adventures.

We had quiet, peaceful adventures, like watching the sunset over Lago Petén Itzá (watching a good sunset is always an adventure).

We had an epic adventure to Yaxha, a complex of Mayans ruins about a two hour bus ride east of Flores.

"Cathy!" I turned to my friend as we bounced along the potholed road in our filled-to-capacity shuttle, "this is your last shuttle bus ride!"

We high-fived. And figured out that by the time we returned to Flores that night, we would have spent a grueling twenty-five and a half hours jolting through Guatemala via shuttle bus.

"Enjoy your last ride," I joked. "Every jostle, all the potholes. Take it all in, Cathy. You're going back to Colorado soon, and you'll miss all these exciting roads. You'll just have boring, wide, flat roads where you can drive more than thirty miles an hour."

Cathy didn't seem nearly sad enough to be leaving behind the wonders of Guatemalan infrastructure.

We finally arrived in Yaxha at about two thirty that afternoon, tumbling out of the cramped van and gratefully breathing fresh, dust-free air.

That's the worst thing for me about driving through Guatemala. Not the potholes or the sardine-esque method of cramming tourists into shuttles. It's all the dust and the pollution that really get me.

Our guide and his daughter began to lead us through the park.

And although the ruins at Yaxha weren't as tall or impressive as at Tikal, they were quieter. Lovelier. More enjoyable to wander through.

"More Mayans come here, come to Yaxha, to practice their religion than go to Tikal," our guide spoke fervently. "In Tikal, now, we have too many tourists. But Yaxha... Yaxha is still for us. Yaxha is where my child will come to practice her religion."

"Most of the pyramids are still buried under the rainforest," the guide continued to speak reverently about his worship ground. "It's very expensive work, excavating pyramids. Guatemala doesn't have the money, so the Germans are helping. Americans helped with Tikal, and the Germans are helping with Yaxha. And so," the guide shrugged, "many of Yaxha's treasures are now in Germany. But that's just human nature," he added forgivingly.

A buried pyramid

We continued to meander through the rainforest, stopping to look at game court ruin, to climb pyramids, and to watch families of monkeys noisily swinging from the branches above.

At the second to last pyramid of the afternoon, I asked the people I'd been chatting with, a couple of travelers from the Netherlands, if they'd like pictures of themselves doing acro yoga in front of the Mayan pyramids.

"Well, I've never done yoga before..." the girl responded with a nervous sort of enthusiasm.

"That doesn't matter," I assured her. "It's pretty easy. You just have to relax and trust me a little."

So I ended up putting a fair amount of tourists on my feet for photographs. And then asked one of the tourists from Thailand if she could snap a few of me.

Because I'm noticing that it's very rare these days that I actually have photographs of myself. For better or worse.

We ended our time in Yaxha with a sunset. A sunset which I described in my last post, so I won't expound upon how remarkably beautiful it was again. I'll just include a few more photographs.

We all climbed back into the shuttle after the sun had finally slipped behind the horizon and darkness had begun to seep into the sky. Sitting next to Cathy on the cramped, bouncy journey home, I settled into the feeling of gratitude. And wonder. That a penniless hobo such as myself could have experienced such a remarkable two weeks. Two weeks of sharing an amazing (albeit quite challenging) country with two people incredibly important to me.

Gosh, I'm blessed.

We shared a final afternoon in Guatemala City, with my friend Gustavo acting as guide.