Day 5 - Yaxchilan, Mexico / Peten, Guatemala – June 12th

We left our hotel at 6:30 a.m. and drove almost 3 hours to the Usaumacinta River. It took about an hour for the border guard to check all our passports and load our luggage and get on the long boats for our boat ride to the Yaxchilan ruins. We went down the river for about 30 minutes to the ruins that you can only get to by boat. The Usumacinta River is a candidate for the River Sidon and Yaxchilan is a candidate for the city of Zarahemla. It was a walled city, and we had to walk through some dark tunnels with bats hanging above us to get into the main courtyard. Mike turned on his flashlight and stood by some steps so the group wouldn’t trip and fall. What a nice boy  He said he saved at least 4 people from getting hurt. They were beautiful ruins. And there was a temple on a hill that even had all the combs on top. There have been very little renovations done, so it was all the ruins as they were found which I liked. The stairs heading up to the temple were all crumbly and kind of scary to climb up. We had a good time exploring the site. We then boarded our long boats again and went upriver about an hour and 20 minutes to get to our Guatemala City of Bethel. From there, we got on 4 small buses, since it was a rocky, bumpy dirt road for 3 hours and our big buses couldn’t handle it. Mike and I sat at the very back, so we felt all the bumps and even got some air on occasion. It was a fun ride, but the older couples really were happy when we finally got back on to pavement. Then we had to drive another hour and a half to our hotel in Peten. We were starving when we got here. We had to eat breakfast at 5:30 a.m. and we didn’t get to our hotel until 7:30 p.m., with no lunch stop, just some nuts and jerky for snacks that we had in our day packs. But dinner was fabulous! And the hot chocolate was so yummy!