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Published: November 9th 2006
From rainy rainy Coban we left our hotel early to get the one direct bus which we had been told left at 10am. While walking through the market looking for the bus terminal, we were stopped by a guy who asked us where we were going. We told him Flores and he said, hang on, got out his cellphone and phoned someone. Next thing we know he tells us sit in the cafe , order a coffee, the bus will be here in a moment. This was strange because we were told it was a large pullman bus that left at 10, and it was 9.15....Apparently the buses don't always go in low season, and even in the small shuttle there were just four of us. We had a pretty smooth ride to Sayaxhe where we took a "ferry", see the picture and you'll see why we don't quite think of it as a ferry. It did the job carrying across huge trucks, sometimes two at a time!
We got to our hostel Los Amigos in Flores, a small island town in Lake Peten. You could walk around and through the town in about 25 minutes, so that's what we
did. We also found out that the bank didn't have an ATM, so we walked to the "mainland" town of Santa Elena. Not an exceptionally beautiful town but some fun shops to explore. We returned to the hostel which had a great laidback atmosphere, lots of hammocks, couches and great food. We chatted with some of the other travellers and watched it pour down with rain for about half an hour. The first night we stayed in the dormitory (no one ever seems to receive our reservations....) and while Krista slept fine, I slept above a smelly German who moved around a lot at night, and since the bunk beds were not that sturdy I felt I was sleeping in some kind of "dancing bed". The next morning I wanted to move to a different place, but luckily a private room was available where we slept for the next two nights.
The next day we planned our trip for the next few days, buying our ticket to Belize and booking a sunrise tour to Tikal ruins. Because of these payments we again made our way over to Santa Elena (we always underestimate our spending powers...) to get some more
money! We met up again with our Israeli friends Hen and Lilach who then planned to do the tour the next day as well. We had an early night, but still didn't sleep much. I woke up at 2am and was convinced our van had already arrived, and everytime I heard a noise, I told Krista (which she was obviously very happy about...) and so from 2am we didn't get much sleep until our van finally arrived at 3.30am. Our guide Little Caesar (that really was his name) was an extremely enthusiastic guy with a US accent and kept saying things such as "Lock an' Load 'Em" for no reason. He told us a whole lot about the Mayans and the whole history of the ruins, which was really interesting because at none of the other ruins had we had a guide to tell us the background information, so that made this visit pretty special. Due to the clouds we weren't able to see the sun rise as we had seen on some of the photos, but at 5am we heard the forest wake up. We heard lots of howler monkeys and birds, and we saw on top of the
highest temple and just waited for the morning to arrive. (And for our energy to arrive...)
The Tikal ruins are extremely spread out and very impressive. Again very different from the other ruins we have visited. In the middle of the jungle, really large temples which you can climb most of to see the views of the other temples. The carvings aren't as clear as some of the ones at Uxmal for example, but the views were amazing. And we climbed all of the ones we could climb!!
The next day we were heading to our next border already, this time to the tropical paradise of Belize..more about our stay here in the next journal!
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Werner
non-member comment
wow
Heej chicas! Ziet er echt waanzinnig uit allemaal. Leuk om helemaal met jullie mee te reizen ;-) en dat terwijl wij aan de andere kant van de wereld zitten! haha Maar Belize it is nu? Klinkt lekker exotisch. Wij vertrekken vandaag van ons bounty eiland Koh Tao, ook echt fantastisch. Nu de duik diploma's op zak zijn gaan we zo via Chumpon en Bankok naar Cambodja om daar de Angkor What temples te bekijken. K ben erg beniewd. Zal ook wel een enerverend reisje worden. De 22ste zijn wij weer terug op het thuis front. Jullie? Veel plezier nog, en tot snel! Werner