Swinging in Hammocks - Guatemalan Style

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Guatemala...Into Country number 3 already!
We crossed the border from Belize to Guatemala on Monday (I think - seriously losing track of what day it is now..) and into the island of Flores.

We weren´t expecting much of Flores, as the guide book said ¨ít sux arse¨ (it seriously says that) but it was actually pretty cool. Found a hostel with a rooftop terrace complete with hammocks and a lake view, and spent a few days here chilling out. Randomly met another Kiwi girl while swinging in the hammocks one afternoon, she is doing a similar trip to the first part of ours, so hopefully we will meet up again in Honduras.

Ventured into the ruins of Tikal which are set in some wicked jungle. Saw too many monkeys to count, a coatis (related to a raccoon), a toucan and some seriously scary spiders. As well as the ruins of course! The tallest ruin here is about 64m and most of them you can climb if you are game enough to climb up what is essentially a really steep ladder to the top with no safety barrier once you get up there! But awesome views over the jungle at the top so was well worth it.
It turns out that it was actually at Tikal Ruins where Star Wars was filmed, not in Belize as we had thought...ah well

Flores is a tiny island in the middle of a lake with heaps of small restuarants sitting over the water on decks. We managed to catch some sort of celebration week (Saturday was Guatemala´s independance day) and the locals were having a bit of a ´dance off´at the top of the hill. There was a huge circle of locals with young school girls in the centre ´shaking their booty´very Sth American style, then young teenage boys lip syncing to boy band songs and giving out roses to the girls (cringe worthy but very entertaining!)

Still pretty warm here.. getting used to this balmy weather and not looking forward to the cold as we move higher into the mountains! Having a great time in case you can´t tell 😊

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