Tickle Me Tikal

Cadet one to Starbase! Notify Vice StarCommisioner Gorn immediately, the Peten sector of Guatemala quadrant is hotter than hyperspace! No cadet could last half a starling in this heat without those Thermocooled Skinsuits Headmaster Trillian promised us. Interplantary politics, bollocks! How is a Star Cadet supposed to learn the ins and outs of interstellar diplomacy on a budget of a quarter sextillion credits per trimester? I´ll link my coordinates to the HoloCube immediately, and hopefully Starfleet Academy Beta can get turned around before reaching this over-heated hellhole.

That being said, Antigua was an awesome city but we had to get moving on. We got to this little island on a lake called Flores, and as mentioned in very clear terms above, it´s hotter here...even hotter, I maintain, than the chemical reaction resulting from high-speed intergalactic travel.

It is the tropics, after all.

From Flores we went to the ruins at Tikal, which were awesome, and got up close and personal with some spider monkeys. I got some good video of one doing mundane monkey-things. The ruins were incredible...hard to imagine what they looked like in their heyday, all populated with badass Mayan jungle-thumpers hauling sacrificial animals through the jungle from temple to temple. Our hostel here in Flores offered us a very cheap room. It´s so cheap because the floor is nothing but dirt and loose rocks. Occasionally a baby chicken wanders in to drop turds and peck at stuff.

The British owner of the hostel assured us there are ¨no mosquitos,¨ because whenever they lay their eggs on the lake fish come and eat them before they can hatch. Being that he was British, he managed to make this logic sound perfectly credible and reasonable. I didn´t give it a second thought until I woke up in bed covered in itchy bites.

It was then I realized the gaping hole in this sly Brit´s story: there have to be mosquitos to lay the eggs on the lake in the first place. Needless to say I felt like a fool; so easily accepting this man´s lie just because of his classy British accent and convincing hand gestures.

I am having money problems. Trying to keep my debit balance low in case my card gets stolen backfired severely because of paypal´s FILTHY LIES about how long transfers take. I have 70 bucks in overdraft fees and a negative balance, so its time for emergency measures (Mom and Dad? Do you read this?) Our next stop is also Belize....the most expensive country we´re visiting on this trip. Poor timing.