El Remate to Flores

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I feel like saying Happy New Year! I don't know why. Happy almost new month!

This morning we got up & had salty eggs & the most delicious drink. They're called Licuados here & they blend fresh fruit with either water or milk & serve. Yummmm! I had a Papaya Licuado this morning with water. MMMMM!

Mircos came to gather us up calling to us "hey gringos." 😊 That's us! We gathered our things & headed for the road to catch our mini bus. After walking in the hot hot sun for about 25 minutes a bus arrived & picked us up. We paid our $1.50 each for the hour bus ride into Santa Ilena, the town just next to Flores. The ride was fairly uneventful & we were just grateful that the bus wasn't jam packed. We arrived at the bus terminal & upon exiting the bus are surrounded by guys yelling in your face, "taxi!" or "where you going?", "need hostel," etc. It's taking a bit of getting used to the differences culturally here. Personal space does not exist. Do not come to Guatemala if you value your personal space. On the buses you practically sit on your neighbors lap & when you do catch a cab it doesn't belong to you, they'll pick up other people along the way (just like in Belize). But here the other thing to get used to is the constant negotiation & the barrage of people at every turn selling something. From an excursion to a bottle of juice or a fresh baked treat or potato. It doesn't matter someone is always trying to sell something & there is always someone in your face. It's not just geared toward tourists either, there is no discrimination. The roving vendors, often children, are just trying to make their living. But they will literally stand right in front of you & repeat 6 times in 5 seconds what they are selling without moving. Whether you say no thank you or not they just stand there. It's an adjustment but we are just beginning to get used to it. We're going to try to pretend we don't speak English or Spanish awhile & see what that does. Probably nothing but it will be a fun game for us. What we have noticed is that the locals completely ignore said vendors when they don't want to buy. We are definitely enlisting that method as well.

So, off the bus & after haggling with a taxi & getting the price cut in half. In order to get to the taxi, 3 guys jam their way up to us & practically veer us to the taxi. It's all such a learning process. But anywho, made it to Flores where we stopped at a hostal that Mircos wanted to stay. We opted to upgrade to a nicer hotel with a clean unshared shower. It cost us $17 for the night. Just to get to the hotel we had to get out of the grips of our cab driver and the guy at Mircos hostel who was practically following us down the road trying to sell another hotel to us. Another thing we have come to learn here is that although the people are very friendly & helpful in general, when it come to trying to get somewhere or buy something, the helpfulness changes to survival & sales. For example, when I asked the hotel selling guy what way to walk to get to another hotel we had read about, he didn't answer, only offered that we should take the cab to drive us there. When attempting to find a bus, we are directed to the sales office reserved for tourists. None of the locals go to this guy because he charges 3x as much for the same service. We've learned to just walk, not ask the "sales" people for help & don't take anyone's advice at complete face value. Some things we are just going to learn by doing.

We found our way to Hospedaje Dona Goya 2 & love our room. It has a view of the Lake (same Lake Peten Itza, different side), a little balcony & a sparking clean bathroom. Woohoo! It's amazing what a difference it makes spending $4 more. Our plan today is to send some trinkets home that we've collected, get $, run errands in general. Good luck to us, we need it! Flores looks like a Spanish Colonial town with cobblestone streets & brightly painted buildings. There are little tuk tuks driving around to get you from place to place but we walked around the entire island of Flores in about 15 minutes. It's no wonder that Flores is covered in Spanish colonial architecture. Apparently, the Spanish came here, destroyed every shred of Mayan Temples & homes & rebuilt the town with a huge Cathedral in the center of town. We learned that the only ATM in Flores doesn't work so we tuk tuk'd it to Santa Ilena across the bridge. This is our first true taste of a Guatemalan city. It is nuts & busy & noisy & stinks like exhaust. Again, no personal space & apparently every store is very specialized. You go to the paper store for paper, the hardware store for tape, the random store for shampoo, & so on. The stores that carry more expensive items each have a plainclothes guy standing at the entrance holding either a semi-automatic weapon of some variety or a sawed off shotgun. The banks have the uniformed security and buzz you in through a glass door. I've read that private security is big business here so that must be what the plainclothes guys are?... We could only pull out $250 US at a time from the ATM, but apparently you can just keep pulling out that amount until you get the amount of money you want. Oh, transaction fees...

After walking a bunch & asking what store we needed to visit to find what we needed, we were ready to head back to Flores. We also learned it can be tough to come by a box because those are used as garbage cans. But finally one kind guy gave us a box so we could mail our stuff.

Our first tuk tuk driver we talked the price down in half. All you have to do is sound offended & they immediately cut the price, if they are trying to gouge you anyway. Our tuk tuk driver back into Flores told us that the tuk tuks are set prices, $5 Quetzal pp.

We mailed our things with the help of the exceptionally nice post office woman. $56 US later, we had shipped our stuff. Eeek! But worth every penny if it makes it home. 😉 We ran into Mircos again who was lounging on the dock in front of our hotel & we found some dinner on the water. Mircos said his hostal was full of travellers who sat around & tried to one up eachother on their travel stories & travel savvy. That particular hostal was rated "best backpacker hostal" in our book. We've found there are a certain type of traveller at those places often. Too cool for school comes to mind. But they are usually cheap & decent enough as far as accomodations go. Back to our room to continue downloading pics. Fastest WiFi yet! Who would've thunk it?

Mostly just thinking about how much I love the smell of soap. Geoff is showering now & all I can smell in our room is soap. It's so wonderful! On the bus, when I get a whiff of soap, I'm soooo happy! Oh, the little things. Trust & believe: the whiff of soap is so much better than the many, many alternatives.
The dock in front of our hotel was full of locals until 2am playing guitar & drinking & singing. The guitar player was pretty good. The singing was entertaining. The songs were even better. Pink Floyd to Sublime & some Spanish songs. Good times. Serenaded to sleep.

There's a tv in our room, first since Corozal, Belize. Didn't even turn it on. TV is lamo!

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Photos

Mango Licuado
& a pequeno pot of tea.

Topes (speed bumps)
They are in abundance in this part of the world.

Horses
are tied up everywhere along the side of the road.

The view
from our room at Dona Goya 2.

Good thing
the boat is still tied up.