The road to Tikal

So after we said goodbye to Manfred and thanked him graciously for his hospitality we were off to meet up with Mark and Leisel. They were a couple that Mark and the girls met while visiting a hotsprings waterfall in Rio Dulce. They were waiting for us when we got off the boat from the Finca. They introduced themselves to me and the little ones and it was a go. Off we went, we were on our way to Tikal. Along the way we heard all about Mark and Leisels travels, they were on a sailing expedition, they had been all through Central America and it sounded like a great trip. Our estimated time frame was approximately 5 hours to get to Tikal. It was great to have the added company of this new couple. Mark quickly talked us into getting chickens for our back yard, while Leisel endured a 101 questions by Brooklyn. I was so thankful that she was so great with the kids, she had the patience of a god. The road to Tikal was pretty good, not to bumpy and fairly flat. We stopped to fill up on fuel at a Texaco and quickly resumed speed on the road to Tikal. After about 50km we stalled out, Mark restarted and continued, but only to stall out once more! What now?....Thankfully we were just coming into a little town, we limped the motorhome to a gas station, thinking that we need to change the fuel filter. Well in guatamaula when you buy a fuel filter the guy installs it for you same as an oil change, you buy the oil and th efilter the guy does the oil change free of charge, crazy. Anyways the attendant drops the old fuel filter and smells his hand. I think to myself this guy must be good if he can 'smell the problem' turns out anybody could because the filter was full of gasoline not diesel. Turns out that the attendant at the Texaco filled us with gasoline!! Can you believe it. Our smooth running day just took a turn. Mark took off to find a Taller Mechanico and I went to phone my brother for mechanical advice. No luck with the phone call Mark soon returned with a Mechanic. This guy was awsome, hooked up a bypass so we could limp the motorhome to his shop. Then he and the 2 Marks drained 50 gallons of diesel and Gas from the tank using a 2 gallon bucket (no kidding). The kids, Leisel and I walked down the street to check out some animals. When the local kids saw us they all came out of their houses, in no time at all our older girls were playing a game with all the local little kids. It was great! Leisel got lots of amazing pictures of this. It started getting dark so we made our way back up to our motorhome to check on the progress. It turns out the owner of the Texaco, where the unfortunate incident occured, was also there. He had heard of the problem and came with a drum full of diesel for us. Things were starting to get better. Although i felt so bad for Mark and Leisel, that their trip to Tikal got abruptly interupted, i was so thankful they were with us because Mark was so helpful and knew more spanish than all of us combined and Leisel was calm and great with the kids! Once we were all fixed up the owner of the Texaco invited us to stay at his place so we accepted his offer since it was quite late. He slept through a driving rain storm and woke up to the humid heat of Guatamala and hit the road once a gain.
Half way to Tikal we stopped off for a swim to cool down and let the dogs run around. Mark had talked us into smuggling the dogs into Tikal. This had been an issue since no dogs were allowed in the park. So we did..........We parked in abit of shade, and all went to check out the ruins. They were amazing. We got some great pictures. The sun was starting to set so we went to climb a pyramid to watch the day come to a close, when a Tikal Park Ranger stopped us to ask us if we had a big motorhome with dogs in it!! OMG! we played completely dumb saying "no espanyo" when Mark came to our rescue and had a big conversation with this guy. Turns out he said we had one small dog, was that ok, we were going to keep it in the motorhome only. We stayed the night in Tikal. Mark and the older girls got up early the next morning to go with Mark and Leisel once again on a guided tour this time through the ruins. I stayed with the little kids and cleaned up the place. We left Mark and Leisel in Tikal and headed towards Belize. Another country behind us and a new one to discover.