Guatemala - Flores, Tikal, and Rio Dulce

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Flores

Very early the next morning we hitched a ride to Flores with Milos, a Czech guy now living in the Virgin Islands who had hired a car to travel around Guatemala. We met him at Semuc Champey and again later in the lodge. We took the scenic route up to Flores, attempting to navigate through various unsealed and unsignposted tracks. We didn't really know if we were going the right way (although we pretty much were) and neither did most of the locals we asked. Eventually we were escorted by two policemen on a motorbike back on to the main highway. We did pass through some beautiful countryside, eat lunch in a village off the beaten track, and swim in a little river. The swim in the river was kind of funny as when we arrived there was no one around, but while we were swimming a water truck arrived and started pumping out water. Then loads of people passed in buses to see us effectively swimming in their drinking water.

Tikal

Flores was quite a pretty little town but again extremely touristy: we only stayed one night. Very early in the morning the three of us drove to Tikal, a complex of Mayan temples deep in the jungle. We paid the exhorbitant entrance fee and then took an exceedingly expensive guided tour. The tour was very good, however, and we learnt a lot. Without some kind of background knowledge it's difficult to really appreciate what you are seeing. The complex is also very large and it could be a little difficult to navigate the jungle paths without someone who knows the routes. The ruins are the most impressive I've seen so far. We climbed a couple of the temples providing wonderful views accross the jungle with other ruined temples jutting out from the trees.

Rio Dulce

That same day (yes, we were travelling fast) we drove back down to Rio Dulce - an unattractive port on the river which forms a convenient place to stop on the way to Honduras. We stayed in an imaginatively name hostel called the Hostel Backpackers, that was located on the river bank with a nice riverside restaurant. After the less than salubrious surroundingly, the next thing I noticed was the amount of police, security guards, and guns in the vicinity. There were national guard patrols in the town, four machine gun armed bodyguards in our hostel restaurant both nights we were there, and just generally local people openly carrying guns. Needless to say we didn't explore the town in the evenings...

The morning after our arrival the three of us hired a boat along with a french/canadian couple we met, Pascal and Marie. We took a trip along the Rio Dulce (freshwater river) through a nice canyon, stopped to swim where a hot spring seeps into the river, and finished up in Livingston. Livingston is a Garifuna town on the Carribean. It has a black culture that is very different to the rest of Guatemala and is more similar to Belize. It was interesting to see the different culture but we didn't find the town itself to be particularly interesting. We had a delicious lunch of fresh seafood and plantains cooked in coconut milk and returned to Rio Dulce.

We wanted to try to reach the Bay Islands, Honduras in one day so we decided to leave very early the next morning for the seven hour drive to La Ceiba, arriving hopefully in time to catch the last ferry to the islands....

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Comments

[Lesley Stableford]

It's always a good read when you do a new blog hun, can't wait for the next episode. xx