I got up at 4:15 am to catch the boat across the lake from San Miguel (where I live with a host family) to flores and then the shuttle to Tikal at 5am. At 5:20, the shuttle still hadn’t arrived and a taxi driver had stopped to ask me if I needed a ride somewhere. I told him what had happened and as we were talking, we saw the shuttle I was supposed to be on crossing over the bridge and leaving Flores! So, I hopped in the taxi and we followed the shuttle until it stopped at a redlight and we could flag it down. Then I got on and things seemed to be fine. There were a group of nice people from around the world on the bus. Then, about 15 minutes later, the bus got a flat tire! So we pulled over and waited for a new bus, which came in half an hour. We all reboarded, hoping to catch the tail-end of the sunrise still. Literally, 5 seconds later, this second bus got a flat tire! So we waited another 15 minutes for a third bus and eventually we made it to Tikal at 8am instead of 6:30am. It turned out to be a hilarious situation and we were all in it together and making new friends in the process. I still had 5 hours to explore and walk around Tikal and that was more than enough time to see everything.

I was able to see spider monkeys up close and some funny orange, racoon-like creatures with snouts, who had no fear of humans whatsoever. The views were spectacular from the tops of the temples. I also took an hour long walk down a jungle trail where I encountered absolutely nobody else except monkeys! That was one of my favorite parts of the day.