Another Freezing Night Bus to Flores and Tikal

After a short mini bus ride back to Guatemala City, we jumped on to the bus to Flores, armed with jumpers in case it was cold. Unfortunately, jumpers weren´t enough and we found ourselves shivering in our seats and praying that the journey would go quickly. It wasn´t to be, and we arrived virtually sleepless in Flores early the next morning.

As soon as we got off the bus, we were surrounded by taxi drivers offering to take us straight to the Tikal ruins. As we wanted to dump our stuff at a hostel and get a couple of hours rest first, and we had managed to find another couple who felt the same, we all got in a taxi to Hostel Los Amigos and arranged for the taxi to come back at 8am to take us to the ruins.

Unfortunately, we were unable to get much rest and piled back into the mini bus at 8 still exhausted. We picked up a guide on the way, who thankfully let us catch up on a bit of sleep during the 45 minute journey there.

Once we arrived, we set straight out on the 4 hour tour of the ruins and the surrounding jungle. Our guide had mentioned in the mini van that there was a lot of wildlife to be seen, including tarantulas, howler monkeys and snakes. Sure enough, just metres away from the entrance, as we took an uncommon route through the jungle towards the ruins, our guide picked up a piece of long grass and crouched down by a small hole in the ground and started poking around. Suddenly, a HUGE tarantula came running out and he smoothly smacked it on the arse to move it away from its hole, straight towards us!

Much to the boys amusement, Poppy and the other girl, Emily, screamed at the top of their lungs and jumped back in fear. Meanwhile the boys started to reconsider their proclamations in the mini van to hold any spiders the guide found. However, after the massive spider calmed down and crawled slowly up the guide´s leg into his hands, the boys regained confidence in order to prove their 'machismo.' All was going well until the spider regained energy and decided to run from Stu´s hand up his arm, and all hell broke loose. The guide simply chuckled to himself as he calmly removed the spider from Stu´s shoulder and put it down near its hole again.

From then on, the girls begged for no more spiders, and we wondered if it was necessary to see any snakes. The guide had grown up in the area, so was full of knowledge about the surrounding wildlife, as well as the ruins, which were far bigger than those of Copan. We spent the rest of the day wondering through the jungle to the various 'Plazas' and climbing some of the ruins, which were of considerable height. The views from the tallest ruins were incredible; of vast jungle with the peaks of other ruins popping out of it, and the rest of the national park, which is the size of Belize.

After having a quick beer to refresh ourselves in the sweltering heat, we continued our tour to the final plazas before finally piling back onto the bus and heading back to Flores. We were glad to have seen the Copan ruins first as they were far more decorative but a good deed smaller and less grand than those of Tikal.

We spent the rest of the day wondering around the small island town of Flores, which was very small but quaint. We sat and watched the sunset over the water in a small restaurant before heading back to the hostel to catch up on some much needed sleep in our little tree house room on our final night in Guatemala.

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