My Life is Complete

Ladies and gentleman, my life is complete. I am someone with ambitions, with goals. I decide that I want something, and I may not be the most direct about it, I may not be the most logical, I may get frustrated or discouraged, but when I have a goal I reach it. And I have reached a goal, and for all intents and purposes, my life is complete. I have seen a monkey. In the wild. Swinging from trees. But that's not enough! Not only did I see one large full grown howler monkey watching us and pooping from the branches, I saw a baby monkey. That's right. A baby monkey. Check plus, life complete. It's so easy to make me happy.

We left San Cristobol yesterday after a hoppin night out on the town. One of my travel companions keeps getting confused about the day, thinking it's always Friday, and with good reason. Tuesday night and we were at a nice little bar dancing our butts of to Mexican ska. Mexican Ska! Cheka, being the stud that she is, managed to get the owner to let the band play for an extra hour! Oh the things you can do when you put your mind to them. See. Goals. Speaking of goals and Cheka being a stud, she just got accepted to COLUMBIA, HER TOP CHOICE SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK! Watch out New York. I mean it.

Right. Leaving San Cristobol. We arrived at our little jungle paradise after five rough hours on the bus (to be fair, I slept the whole time, but I hear that they were five rough hours...). We're staying at a place called El Penchen. It's four an a half kilometers from the ruins, and probably the same distance from town. It looks like a silly jungle movie set with stone paths leading to the cabana rooms. But there's hot water and toilet seats which are my two signals of a nice place to stay. We fell asleep last night to the sound of live music coming from the restaurant, and woke up this morning to the sounds of birds screaming bloody murder.

We decided to walk up to the ruins, and along the way came across a gentleman offering to sell us psychodelic mushrooms. We declined. We joined a tour group for a tour of the jungle and then a tour of the ruins. Our guide was great. Funny, and full of facts. Did you know that the Maya diagnose diabetes by having the afflicted person pee on an anthill? If the ants take to the pee, sugar in the urine. They treat diabetes with clove tea, which he had us smell. He also found the leaf of a plant that smelled like rootbeer. It's used to treat the liver "after too much tequila." Plus he encouraged us to sample the jungle cuisine including termites ("eat the animal, not the clay") and fresh water snails ("you put it in your mouth and it finds its own way down."). Neither of my travel companions was willing to partake, even after my generous offer of a dollar, so we only heard second hand how it was. Our guide also talked about Mayan culture, specifically about the ceremonies wherein young women would pierce their tounges, and young men their penises ("you're out of service for a couple of weeks") The blood was an offering to mother earth, and it was a great honor to do it. To dull the pain? Mushrooms. Indeed, we talked quite a bit about the mushrooms, but alas, no samples. Not the kind of guided tour talk I used to hear on trips with my family...

Tomorrow we leave for Flores, Guatemala. A van picks us up at 6 in the morning, then we get to Betel (I think) and get on a boat. We'll probably spend the night in Flores, and then it's off to Rio Dulce, Casa Guatemala!