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Hello there,
After a false start on Monday morning where my porridge and stomach decided to have a fight, I got up on Tuesday determined to get myself to Flores by nightfall and then onto Tikal the next day to check out some Mayan ruins. Got to the bus station and the very nice man informed me there was no 9.30am bus as they didn´t have a driver and there wouldn´t be one until 2.30am, which meant I would get into Tikal for 3am. After some internal crying and some linguistical trouble due to my still very basic Spanish, I managed to get some info off him of another bus company that was travelling towards Flores. I raced across town with my back pack and just got the next bus heading to Guate City.
On the bus I chatted to an ex soldier who fought in the Guatemalan war and was now earning a mint as head of a private security firm. He was a nice chap, he offered me some of his ham (not a euphamism, it was nice German ham which later repeated on me) and we chatted away for the next four hours, in English, unfortunately
as I seem to have this radar for finding residents who can speak fluent English. I get to Guate and there´s a bus there waiting for me and for the next 10 hours I am on my way to Tikal, trying to find anything I can do to keep myself entertained. I count mountains for a while, read my book and try and learn some spanish. I have a hankering for playing mobile phone text roulette but it´s a very hard game to play on your own. Finally at 12.30am, I crash into my hotel, which is gorgeous and wake up the porter, who I notice has very small arms.
Next morning it´s an early start to the ruins of Tikal. I meet a couple of lovely Australian girls on the way called Charmaine and Lexi. Charmaine looks very much like Katie Holmes before the bad, short hair cut. Get to Tikal and you can see why it´s the place that everyone wants to go to - hidden inside dense jungle and forest, which is like travelling through a sauna (jeans and shirt where the worst combination I could have ever considered. Why not wear a spacesuit!) but once
you have penetrated the main part of it, the Grand Plaza is spectacular. I know nothing about ancient architecture, it´s a subject that I have little interest in (unless it´s made of cheese of course) but even I can recognise how awesome the place is. It is also crawling with fire ants who like to drop on you and nibble your arms and I don´t like them as much.
Having said all this, I was kind of ruined out within 4 hours. No disrespect to the Mayans, what they achieved was incredible, but I was tired, sticky and the fire ants were pissing me off so I travelled back to Flores with the Aussie ladies and two chaps from Leicester called Joe and Tom (little did I know this at the time but 3 days later Tom would decide to flash his penis at me). Me, Joe and Tom had a few drinks at their hostel and chatted away only to be interrupted by a prick named Chris who worked at the hostel. A cross between Norris from Coronation Street and a large toad he decided to regale our group with a diatribe about how Israeli travellers are really
picky when it comes to rooms and they make his life difficult. After this Anti-Semetic rant I left Joe and Tom to it while I freshened up in my hotel and watched Spanish pop videos. In the evening we went for a kicking night out in Flores which finished at 11 when the most kicking nightclub in Flores closed!
Next day it was a very rickety bus to Coban where I met a really lovely Australian couple called Blake and Wei-lien who I would later travel to Xela with on Saturday. They were going to Lanquin and I was stopping in Coban, so I went to find a hostel and bumped into Tom and Joe again so we were reunited with each other in a lovely hostel called Casa Luna. I managed to bagsie a double bed in a dorm room for 5 quid so my British thriftness was well nourished by that result. We went out for a meal together in the evening but Coban was pretty quiet for a Thursday and a camp, snippy guy at Casa Luna decided to impose a 9.15pm curfew which we managed to argue (after some time) to 10.30pm. But it didn´t
matter, tomorrow was a long day so an early night wasn´t the worst thing in the world.
Semuc Champey next, which was absolutely brilliant and probably the highlight of the trip so far. I got sunburnt, some fire ants decided to sting my feet (my fault, I dropped some Cheetos on the floor and they all came swarming) but the place was utterly beautiful and the perfect place to chill out, swim and gaup at ladies. It´s a succession of brilliantly coloured turquoise pools with baking hot sun beating down on you with gorgeous lush vegetation framing it. If it´s not paradise then it´s pretty damn close! Tom, Joe and I pretty much spent 4 hours just swimming and pissing out, with a short interim hike to the top of the location to have a look at the stunning scenery and take some rather untoward photography (see facebook!) After we had to leave (not before Joe was ripped off by a kid selling Gallo, the national beer) we went to look around some caves in Lanquin which, to be honest, was a little underwhelming after the wondrousness of Semuc but I haven´t been in a cave for a while and it´s always good to see a stalagtite now and again.
We returned to Coban and Lexi and Charmaine had joined us at Casa Luna so we had a little gang going on. After some food and polishing off a bottle and bit of rum, Tom had the bright idea to go to club called El Safari which he spotted on the way into Coban, and he felt we should all go mainly for the fact it had Zebra print exterior. I was firmly against going to this house of cheese and I am glad I was outvoted because we all had a fantastic time; speaking broken spanish to locals, dancing like lunatics and generally causing a general gringo nuisance of ourselves. And when we´d had enough (and not before Joe has been ripped off by the establishment after purchasing some Gallos) we rocked back to Casa Luna, where I am sure the snippy guy was probably ready to combust at our lateness!
And the next day, after we had all decided we would meet up with each other in Xela in the next week, (and Tom had decided to purposefully expose his todger at me) I made my way to the bus station to travel back to Xela. Met Wei-lien and Blake there and we got ready for the 9 hour + journey home. It was fairly unevenful except for me convincing myself that I had lost my credit cards, to the point where I was just about to phone my bank but then realised I was wearing a money belt within which the cards were safely tucked away. It was a typical Simon moment and I am glad I had two people there that I had only met three days earlier there to witness my masterclass in muppetry!
So, it´s Sunday today and what started off as a bit of crappy week has turned into my best week travelling so far and I can´t wait to see what the next little adventure brings.
Over and out!
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Jamie Smith
non-member comment
Very funny blog. You have a great way of putting your journey into words, infact you should consider becoming a travel writer! Lucy would be proud of your use of the English language!