After 3 days in Flores we decided to start heading in the general direction of Antigua. Rather than chance it on a chicken bus we were easily convinced to take a minivan 2 hours down the road to popular traveller hangout Finca Ixobel near the town of Poptun. As it turned out our minivan turned into a bit of chicken bus anyways, at one stage we had 21 people in there!!!

Finca Ixobel also has a kitchen, bar, swimming hole, games, soccer fields, books exchange and also lots of places to stay. For example, tree houses, dormitories and private rooms. They also organise day activities like horse riding, caving, trekking....

We opted for one of the cheaper activities and decided to take a walk ourselves up the mountain next to the farm. The mountain is called The Pyramid and apart from the fact that it would be bigger than any other Pyramid in the world you could easily be convinced that it was another overgrown Mayan temple. It has incredibly uniformly steep sides and rises out of flat ground although there are other smaller similar mountains nearby. Unlike most path up mountains that skirt around the side and gradually make their ways upwards this one struck an almost dead straight live from the bottom to the top and as already mentioned the sides were steep and what was meant to be a walk turned literally into a climb. We were forced to use all four limbs almost the whole way up grabbing and pulling at whatever we could. It had also recently rained and the ground itself was little more than a mudslide. Upon reaching the top we were surrounded with sunshine area and a nice view.

We had thought going down would be even more treacherous than going up but it turned out to be easier and more fun, swinging down on branches and sliding on the mud. Although it was a bit cool we thought we should check out the swimming hole before cleaning ourselves thoroughly in the shower. On the way we met Cheetah the resident spider monkey. We had first met her the night before at dinner trying to scavenge food from the guests and we didn't realise she was actually so sociable. On the path we just got quite close to her and took a photo of her in which she looks as though she is deep in thought. Then we moved on and she followed us. And when we lay down on the bench chairs next to the swimming hole she jumped right up there with us and lay down on our laps. She held our hands and she wrapped her tail right round Sonja and fell asleep. She stirred at the call of birds but would then sigh and fall back to sleep again. She was just like a little baby!

ps. Sonja was very relieved that we didn't find any snakes.