Activity Summary
Saturday 13th May - Day 254 (continued)
Travel to Flores & Guatemala
Dinner at Tacos Los Peces
Sunday 14th May - Day 255
Guided Tikal ruined city tour
Sunset & dinner at Nativo restaurant
Summary
Flores Island
When people mention Flores they actually mean the island north of and connected to the Flores city mainland. The island is pretty small and has everything a tourist would want from pretty decent accomodation to bars, restaurants and great views over the surrounding lake at all angles.
The island was clean, felt safe and was pretty relaxed. It was certainly a nice change from the rundown feel of San Ignacio and was so much cheaper than Belize.
Tikal
The whole Tikal complex is really impressive with massive temples that can be scaled with great views over the jungle and ruined city. The views were so unique.
The guided tour was definitely the right option predominately given the size of the place rather than any great fact sharing. The tour was naturally a whole lot slower than we would walk but in this instance the trade off was worth it.
The best temple & ruins so far in Luke’s opinion.
Transport
Flores Island
Guatemala border -> [private shuttle] -> Flores Island -> [walk] -> Flores hotel
The process is equally smooth from the Belizean border control with the Guatemalan border control. A simple stamp and we are through to meet the rest of the orange wristband wankers on the curb in front of the minibus that would take us to Flores. The island is so small it’s very easy to walk anywhere to get to a hotel.
Tikal
With our guided tour package booked through the hotel we were picked up from our hotel and dropped off at the bus collection point on the island. Super simple and pretty affordable at Q150 (Q120 for the shuttle alone).
Accommodation
Flores - Hotel Villa Del Lago
Number of nights - 2
Price per night per person - £19
There were a number of options in Flores, even booking the day before, but none of them really gave him much confidence when deciding. The cheaper options came with some glaring red flags (lack of AC being a fairly big one) so in the end he opted for the pricier choice.
No regrets however. It was comfortable, AC’d, with two double beds, clean and a private bathroom with hot water. It was quite likely these are luxuries we would miss through the rest of Guatemala. The location in Flores island is kind of inconsequential given its small size but our hotel was on the opposite side of the ‘party’ so it was quiet and super close to the transport hub.
Diary
[Continued]
The walk from the Belizean border control to the Guatemalan one was not overly straight forward. There was a weird middle section where a ton of vehicles and people were sort of congregating and the route around for us was not overly clear. Some locals eventually pointed us in the right direction and into the border control hut. Much like the previous border, passports were handed over, stamped and approved without a word being spoken.
Out on the other side we naturally gravitated towards the large group of white people that were sitting on the side of the curb by a sensible mode of transport. We weren’t here for too long before having our big bags thrown on the roof bars and able to enter the minibus. We waited here for an absolute age, clearly waiting for a number of people to get through border control but given our experience we were a bit perplexed about what took some of the people on our bus so long. Eventually we set off but it was about 45 minutes after we had arrived at the bus.
Our position through the border control meant we were fortunate enough to get the ‘decent’ seats on the bus which went a long way in easing our 2 hour journey. The only stop was at an ATM nearby to Flores, which pretty much everyone on the bus required.
After a bit of research it seems only the 5B ATM machines work with foreign cards, the banks close early / do not regularly have ATMs or even cash in those ATMs and all machines charge about US$4 in fees. Sad times really so we have no choice but to bite the bullet on this one. It was a long queue to get cash, especially after Luke forewent his front runner position when finding out how much it would cost to withdraw - to later return to the back of the queue, tail between his legs after researching how much of pain getting cash out is.
This all took a while but once all was done it was a short ride to the start of Flores Island where the bus dropped us off (as it couldn’t go any further in). Luke somehow became instrumental in decanting bags off the roof while plenty of the morons on the bus just got in the way. Only one guy actually said thank you.
We were guided to our hotel by the bus tour operator, picked up some information about getting to and from Semuc, and then walked the short distance to the Hotel Villa Del Lago and checked in. We had tried to book a Tikal tour over booking.com messages but this seemed to have not been successful so Luke had to navigate this with the receptionist using Google translate as the guy couldn’t understand anything Luke said in Spanish. It all worked out in the end and we got our tickets for the tour, paid for and went up to the room.
The Tikal tour would run from 8am to 3pm the next day so we needed breakfast and ideally a packed lunch with us. There was absolutely nada on the small island that offered the base ingredients we would need so we quickly gave up looking in small stores and consigned Luke to an early wake up the next day to shop at the supermarket across the bridge. The only reason we didn’t this evening was due to a warning from the bus operator not to venture into town at night.
Dinner was at a street food style stand called Tacos Los Peces which only served beef mince in all forms of Mexican cuisine casings. Our initial agreement with each other was to get a portion of the ‘super burrito’ which would have gotten us two of these in one dish for GTQ20 (£2) but we ended up waiting so long for a large group of a Irish lads ahead of us to be served their masses of food Luke decided to change this contract and order two portions as he wanted more food. Nicola protested super burrito gate, Luke being completely unapologetic and the scene was much to the amusement of the people behind in the queue.
The burritos were decent, a nice amount of pico de gallo with some less spicy salsa verde for Luke. It was a sloppy mess of an eating experience on the side of the food truck but it was super cheap.
Luke was up and out of the door just after 7am to go to the supermarket across the bridge. He didn’t have a whole lot of time to get there and back before 8am so it was all a little rushed but he came back with appropriate food for breakfast and a takeaway lunch to Tikal.
Our guide arrived at the hotel 5 minutes before our 8am meeting time, made aware by the hotel staff chasing us down so we ended up making Sergio wait a little. Not often in recent experiences have things run ahead of time so we thought we were sitting pretty being a little late.
Sergio walked us over to the bus, more or less identical to the large minibus we had travelled to Flores in, and got two of the more comfortable seats. It turned out there were 3 English people and the rest of the tour was of Spanish speaking origin so Sergio would have his work cut out for him saying everything in both. We got Tikal ruin entry tickets on the bus from Sergio which made it all pretty easy on the other end.
On the drive the heavens absolutely burst open. We were not completely unprepared, always carrying our raincoats with us in our day bags but it did take us by surprise. The first indication that it was in fact the rainy season in Central America. The rest of the bus however were not so well packed and were only saved from getting soaked by buying a £2.50 plastic poncho at the entrance. For a monopoly and vital item, this really wasn’t such a bad price.
The drive had no fan or AC air flow which was absolutely fine pre storm as the windows provided sufficient air flow. When these all started closing as a result of the rain, the lack of a fan played havoc with the driver's window that was completely covered in condensation from a van full of tourists. With the combination of torrential downpours and not being able to see properly out of the driver's window, it was all a bit sketch but we made it in one piece.
Once parked up at Tikal we ended up standing around for a while as people ordered breakfast and lunch from the restaurant. We got chatting to Tom, an English expat living in Perth Australia, and the only other English speaking tourist on the bus and spent the whole day just the 3 of us walking, talking and occasionally listening to the tour guide. It would have been a very solitary day on his part had no other Western/English speaking tourists had booked on.
Once everyone was ready we began the incredibly slow walk around the Tikal ruin complex in the pouring rain for the first 50% of the tour. Tikal is a huge complex of jungle, ruins and paths that come with a very real warning of getting lost, made more dangerous by the usual savage heat. Apparently people losing their way is fairly common and there was even a poster up about a recent missing person at the reception.
The tour was decent. The guide made walking around the ruins so easy and it was nice to just blind follow someone as we cut through tree lines and the city while just having a nice group chat the whole time. The information the guide provided wasn’t anything groundbreaking but the lead was definitely worth the extra Q30pp.
The rain did put a bit of a dampener on our appreciation of some of the earlier temples and artefacts we were shown around. They were all impressive but our waterproofs are not so waterproof these days - they did well at protecting our bodies from getting wet but our
arms were saturated and the lack of leg cover meant Luke’s balls were swimming the whole time. But we remained in good spirits and hid under what little shelter we could find when we could.
The first major impressive temple we visited was the highest. From the ground up it looked a decent height and on ascending up the steps the views over the tops of the trees with the other taller temples poking through the tree line was mighty impressive. Sadly the cloud cover was pretty low so initially this wasn’t quite so impressive but fortunately for us the wind ended up pushing these along after not so long and we had a much better view over the jungle.
After taking all the high altitude rain and wind beating we could, we descended and camped under a sheltered food area for a little while where we could have a quick nib and derobe from our waterlogged gear. From this point it actually stopped hammering down with rain so we could enjoy the city in somewhat more comfort.
Our next high temple was a fair amount shorter than the previous but with the clearer weather and the howler monkeys kicking off somewhere in the distance, it was one of the better vantage points of the day. Luke ended up with egg on his face when Nicola had correctly said they were monkeys roaring like a jaguar while he was adamant she was wrong, opting for the cooler roaring cat option and being a vocal critic. What a muppet.
Throughout there had been talk of a ‘famous’ spot that Luke knew nothing of. This turned out to be the last area we visited and now completely dry we were able to get some decent pictures and have a chilled walk around.
With the tour ended the group sat around back at the starting restaurant. We felt for Tom who had ordered an awful looking cheese sandwich that he ended up leaving.
At 3pm we were all on the bus back to Flores, this time without any treacherous visibility issues. The tour guide ended up getting off before we got to Flores so we luckily ended the tour without having to tip anything which we were very happy about. Not that it would have cost all that much.
In Flores we parted ways with Tom who sadly wasn’t heading in the same direction as us and may not likely cross paths again. Really sound guy and he really made the Tikal tour a lot more enjoyable.
Nicola was in need of a Guatemalan SIM card so on the advice of the bus guy the day before we walked across the bridge to the Claro store. All seemed pretty simple until Nicola realised she had somewhat been mugged off by having to spend Q50 to buy the sim outright and then Q60 for the 6GB data package (with unlimited social media). Paying for a SIM card was a little unusual and had we known maybe we would have tried somewhere else.
We went for a second food shop to stock up on Semuc lunch items and the last of the admin was to sort transport with Mayan World. Nicola had been watsapping the guy but was getting increasingly fed up with the guy's incompetent messages who just could not answer simple questions. In the end it was a lot easier just to go and pick up the tickets, although in leaving Nicola had the ‘shit I’ve lost my phone panic’ making Luke run back to the store to then realise it was in her bag. Happens to the best of us.
We dropped our bags at the hotel and decided to have a wander around Flores island, only about 1 square km, so it didn’t take very long. We found a decent spot on the lake's edge to watch the sunset so with some time to kill we decided to go back to the taco place. Luke decided again on the super burrito and Nicola a quesadilla but when the cook lifted up a towel swarmed by flies that was covering the grilled meat and veg this really put both of us off. Luke was too far gone in his order preparation whereas Nicola was handed a lifeline of the quesadilla wasn’t possible. Luke settled for his danger super burrito, the risk being a 10 hour coach journey the next day to Semuc, while Nicola left him high and dry deciding on less risky food choices.
Nicola settled on Nativo restaurant and a half decent pizza. We had a great view of the lake and sunset from our lakeside table and Luke ordered a coke in an attempt to kill any potential poo inducing bacteria. He wasn’t sick the next day so it all worked out plenty fine.
Our evening finished with a walk around the rest of the waterfront which was popping with most of the bars & restaurants, and then back to the hotel. Luke did have to run back to the restaurant to fetch Nicola’s water bottle she had left but it was so well hidden that no one had noticed it was there.
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