I spent a couple of days in the North of Guatemala at a place called Flores. It is a small but touristy village on a little island in the middle of a very pretty little lake. It was good to relax there after our ride North, but the reason I had ridden there was to visit the Maya site of Tikal.
Tikal is quite a large Ruin although not as large as Palenque. The special thing about Tikal though is that they decided to go for height in their structures rather than pure massive volume. The buildings are again very impressive and situated on a plane in the middle of the jungle they are very "atmospheric".
As a result of the visit to this ruin I can now positively confirm the existence of monkeys and that ridiculous creation of a bird, the toucan. I have however not got close enough to the toucans to determine weather the large bill of the creature is in fact naturally coloured or has perhaps been "hand painted"... (By local artisans no doubt!...)
So Ive been staying in many assorted hotel rooms in my travels here and in general I have been waking up quite early. I then usually lay around for a while and listen to the sounds of the town coming to life around me.
Since I have been in Mexico and further south there is a new sound in the mornings. It is a very rhythmical sound of light slapping. I only ever heard it very distantly and when I first heard it I assumed it was a couple nearby in the hotel room enjoying some morning "intimacy" and thought no more of it. However this sound has been haunting me in numerous towns as I traveled South and this posed an interesting idea that perhaps there is a particular style of "intimate interaction" that is practiced here in the South and not in the US? This seemed unlikely but again it wasn't a significant enough concern for me to think on more.
However I have now absolutely identified the source of the sound...
It turns out that it is indeed the local people engaging in light slapping in the mornings, but the subject of the slapping is not an intimate partner but rather the morning meal.
All across Latin America the women of the household start their days by making tortillas for the family to eat. They all seem to have the same technique of a seven-stroke slap, and repeat.
Unfortunately my overly active brain has now combined the idea of tortillas and sex and well... it gets kinda kinky in my head some times...
Oversharing, I know :))
