Advertisement
Published: November 16th 2006
We decided to head for a river crossing into Guatemala so headed from Frontera Corazal to Bethel in a half hour dash up river. This was a very pretty and romantic trip which then turned into a bit of a nightmare as once on the Guatemala side every stage of the onward jorney ensured that our wallets were emptied to line the local bus driver, immigration officer, tour organiser and almost everyone esles pockets..... This has been something of a running joke for us over the last two weeks with all travel costing about 3 times what it should no matter what bartering you try! Finally we have seen the light and have found that private tourist shuttles (which we loath because of the big TURISMO signs on the side) are the best and oftern cheapest option!
First in Guatemala was Flores, a small island in lake Peten, which had a traveller atmosphere and nice sunsets over the lake. We headed on to El Remate for Staceys birthday and stayed in a much posher hotel for the night... It actually had a seperate hot water tap which actually worked! Hope you had great birthdays Liz and Ernestina.
From El
Remate we headed cross country to a small town called Poptun to try to connect with Guatemala... Instead we ended up in a hotel which we are pretty sure rented rooms by the hour and got little sleep.... mmmmmm...... moving swiftly on we headed to the yachty haven of Rio Dulce to mingle with the rich..... We found a lovely hideaway called Tortugal, where we actually did see some turtles!
From Rio Dulce we headed on to Guatemala City which we were pleasently surprised by. We visited the Zoo and the Archeological and Ethnological museum. There was the usual hustle and bustle but we found that most people were the friendliest we had met in Guatemala!
Next stop was Monterrico on the Pacific coast to explore the mangrove by punt at sunrise and to take part in an adopt a turtle and release it scheme. This was just too cute, being given our sea turtles, Emilia, for Stacey´s and Henry at first for mine. Mine was swiftly renamed squirt when he peed on me and Emilia turned out to be a fitting name for Stacey´s as when we released them mine headed directly for the sea but Emilia
turned round and headed back up the beach towards Stacey. All ended well in the end with us being proud parents and waving goodbye to our little ones as they were swollowed by the surf.
We are now in Antigua, the old colonial capital, which is a very well organised and clean city surrounded by volcanos. We are next making our way to lake Atitlan for a week before heading on to Peru..
lu&ts
Advertisement
Tot: 0.112s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0504s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Pearl
non-member comment
Jealous
It all looks wonderful! I'm enjoying the updates. :-)