IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!

As I usually do, I was counting on blogging as I went along from Guatemala to Belize and then home.
It has been several days, and since I left Chichicastenango, I have had no wi-fi, let alone electricity in many of the places I visited along the way.

From Chichi.we headed back to Guatemala City for a flight to Flores in the middle of the Peten jungle in Guatemala.  From there it was an overland trek through the wilds and back roads to the border of Belize.

The Peten Jungle is famous for the ruins of Tikal.  However I had no idea that there was more than that.  Our guide tells us that a recent NASA flyover of the entire Yucatan Peninsula and Peten region of Guatemala and including all of Belize, they saw more than 2000 ancient Mayan sites.  Many of these have yet to be investigated let alone restored by archaeologists.  Both Guatemala and Belize have tried to do this tedious work with the help of various international archaeology groups, but with more than 2000 sites, and the expenses involved, it is more than either of these countries can afford.

It is said that each of these cities housed more than 200,000 people (Amazing!). I have now seen so many Mayan temples and heard so many legends, my head is swimming.  Of the over 1000 pictures that I took, a good portion of those are ruins.  I only hope that I can separate which is which.

We stayed in small little hotels in the middle of the jungle and even camped out one night (that was interesting!).  Yesterday, we stayed in the Mayan village of Blue Creek near Punta Gorda, Belize....a small one room thatched hut with food cooked over a Mayan cook stone!

Now I am in the airport in Belize City getting ready to board my Delta flight back home.  Hooray!  I have never been so glad to have a bad airline meal or be surrounded by gringos.  More on this later, right now I have to board.