Tonight we are getting ready to say “Adiós” to Guatemala. On our last full day here, we had some free time to sleep in, relax, shop, and swim. We enjoyed being able to sleep in, drink some coffee on the deck, and devour our hotel’s delicious banana bread pancakes.

Many of us went to the Jade museum this morning. Jade was viewed as the most precious stone to the ancient Mayans and was considered to be more valuable than gold. We followed the museum with visiting some local shops. This region of the world is well known for it’s wood carvings – there really are some beautiful and well crafted pieces here!

This afternoon, we ventured back to Flores, the village we visited yesterday that is located on an island on Lake Petén. Some of us went to a local market we call “the nasty market,” that had pungent-smelling meat and lots of fruits and vegetables.

We finished up a little shopping and took a couple of boats to another location on the lake called Jorge’s Rope Swing. We had lots of fun swinging and jumping off of the rope swings and diving board which were really high! A good portion of our crew will be applying aloe to our sunburns tonight. Many of us are venturing outside of our comfort zones and conquering fears along the way. Tomorrow we will enter back into Belize and fly via Tropic Air to Ambergis Caye, an island right off the coast of Belize.

Thanks for keeping up with our blog!

Ashley B. and Sonja