Flores * 08 - 11.11.2016

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The first few nights in Guatemala I stayed in Flores. I´ts a little island in the Petén Itzá lake.

There are some touists because the Tikal temples are nearby, but in general it´s nice and quiet. I decided not to visit Tikal, becaue I´ve already seen some temples and it was a little expenive. There will be many more temples on my way so I didn´t really mind missing out on this one.

The next day I went with Lisa and Kasper -who stayed at the same hostel- to "the park". The guy at the reception told us that the park was nice to see. We thought he meant a reserve at the other side of the lake. He called a "lancha" (watertaxi) for us and there we went..
In stead of the park we thought we would go, we were taken to the zoo. I´m already not a big fan of zoos, but this was just horrible! The animals lived in tiny cages where they stayed on concrete floors. They didn´t seem to be taken care of because I didn´t see food or fresh water in the cages. The animals that needed water (like the crocodile and the turtles) had such dirty water that it looked more like mud. They had big cats (jaguar and panther) who lived on their own in their cages where they didnt have any place to run around. We all were so shocked about what we had seen that we all needed a little time when we came back.

After a little rest we went with a TukTuk to the local market to buy some fruit and veggies to make a salad and in the evening we went to a little bar where they had 2x20Q cocktails. They had really nice mojito´s and margarita´s.
Lisa and Kasper told me that evening that they didn´t really like the owner of the place we stayed and that they wanted to change hostels the next day. Because we planned to travel to Semuc Champey together, I changed with them to the other hostel the next day.

For me it was a relaxing day. I wrote my blog, I wrote in my notebook and just chilled until they came back from Tikal. When they came back we walked though the town to look for the cheapest shuttle to Semuc Champey. We found one that was just in front of a little restauant that looked really nice. After booking our ticket we had some dinner there. I had a nice pasta with fresh tomato, basill and cheese, Yummy!
I went to bed early because we had to take the bus at 8:00 in the morning.

The next day we waited together with other tourists for the shuttle for almost an hour. When it finally arrived, there was not enough space for everyone. Lisa and I already conquered a seat, but Kasper was still outside. We couldn´t leave him on his own so we got off the bus again..
We had to wait until 12:00 the guy from the agency said, so we had no other choice but to wait. Finally they brought us to the bus. The only thing was that this was a collectivo and that it would only go until Cobán. From there we would be taken care of by the same company over there. They would get us on another bus to Lanquín (the town just before Semuc Champey). We weren´t really sure about this but again we had no other choice but to go with it.

When we arrived at Cobán, there was indeed a man waiting for us. He told us that the next shuttle would leave in an hour. We went for some street taco´s (delicious, with potato and carrot inside) and back to the agency. There we were told that the bus would be a little late, about half an hour. Half an hour became one hour, one hour became two.. When he finally arrived at 22:30 (we waited for 3,5 hours!) we were all so tired that we slept almost all the way to Lanquín, where we arrived at 0:30. It was a veeeeeery long day.

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