Guatemala

Colourful street of Flores

Los Amigos hostel

Flores & Tikal

Caught the water taxi and then a couple of busses from Belize to Guatemala. A Brisbane guy called Mick was traveling with us, and we all got beds in a hostel called Los Amigos, in Flores.

Flores is an island in a lake in the north of Guatemala, and the hostel was run by a Dutch guy and lots of Guatemalan chicas. The communal part of the hostel was so nice; a big jungly garden filled with hammocks and beanbags, a TV showing foreign movies and alternative documentaries, a huge bookswap bookcase, and the yummiest, healthy (mostly vegetarian) food on the menus. Two big fat dogs lounge around, lots of friendly cats snuggle on the beanbags with you, the trees are full of tropical squawking parrots, and it's so pretty at night with lanterns and fairy lights.

We booked a tour for early the next morning, to go to Tikal; the Mayan ruins in the jungle. The main reason people come to Flores is to go to Tikal, so about half the hostel occupants were getting up at 4am like us (and all the others had either gone the day before, or were going tomorrow!) We thought the idea was to get to the park by sunrise, because when it gets light all the birds and monkeys start howling and you realise how much life there is in the jungle. But the sun came up as we were driving, so I guess we would have had to leave much earlier. We arrived at 6am, in the cold, and decided not to pay for a guide because then we'd have to shuffle around with a big group all day, so bought a map and headed into the jungle by ourselves.

We met a nineteen year-old German girl called Janne and got her to join us for the day, she was right at the start of her year-long solo trip through Central America. Brave!

So Tikal was once a major Mayan city, with architecture dating back to 4 AD(and agricultural relics from 1000 BC), but most of the buildings are from 200- 900 AD when it was the capital of the Mayan Kingdom and dominated a huge area of Mesoamerica. It was deserted around 950 AD because of war in the Mayan region, collapse of authority, overpopulation and agricultural fail. The city was only rediscovered in the 19th Century, totally overgrown by the jungle.

There are over 200 structures at Tikal; temples, plazas, pyramids and palaces. They've got fantastic names like 'Temple of the Mask", "Temple of the Jaguar Priest" and "The Lost World Pyramid." Very Indiana Jones. There's a ball court in a kind of arena where the game was to pass a ball using only elbows and knees, and shoot it through a vertical hoop at either end (like in Quidditch.) The winner of the game was sacrificed at an altar, usually decapitation! It was an honour for him. Some of the pyramids were built around the tombs of kings and queens, which were filled with jade, ceramics, shells and dried stingray spines (would have been transported from the coast- a long way away!) and also the bones and skulls of sacrificed adolescents to keep him/ her company.

"Mayan"

We saw a beetle as long as my hand with a horned nose like a rhino, huge butterflies, guinea-pig type rodents the size of wombats, howler monkeys, and even a toucan! The jungle was dense and quiet, but full of rustling. When the sun warmed up it got steamy and mosquitos flocked around us, we regretted having stopped our malaria medication! We got to climb a couple of structures and look out over the impenetrable jungle canopy from above, giving a great view of the tops of other temples poking out of the trees. Before the jungle was cleared it would have been so easy to pass within five metres of a structure and not see it, they are so covered in moss and vines.

By 12.30pm we were exhausted and got the minibus back to the hostel. I had to sit on the bench in the middle of the front seat and kept nodding off, my head snapping forwards and back, Scott sitting behind me kept leaning forward to squeeze my shoulder to wake me up and stop me dozing off on the driver's shoulder!

We had one more day chilling out in Flores, just reading books and drinking banana smoothies in a hammock, and eating tacos from up the hill because they were cheaper than the hostel food. Chris, Jake & Mick caught a bus to Semuc Champay but Scott and I had an earlier flight from Guatemala City so we caught an overnight bus there. It was really comfortable!

Guatemala City

We'd booked in at Quetzalroo, a newly opened hostel in Guatemala City, run by an Aussie girl Jodie and her Guatemalan partner Manuel. Manuel picked us up about 6am from the bus station and later that day took us on an amazing city tour. This couple's friendliness and excitement at showing us around was incredible, it really made us enjoy a city that otherwise we would have felt lost and unsafe in, as it's the most dangerous city in Central America.

Manuel drove us to some city sights and then to two markets where he could answer all our questions (what's that? what's that?) and picked us bits of fruit and sweets and tapas style things to eat. He was so happy and proud to be giving us a good time, it was infectious, and really demonstrates the importance of sometimes getting a local point of view. We would have never, never found these markets, learnt what we did, tasted what we did, without him. He even carried my camera for me in the most dangerous streets.

The second market was a sprawling slum of stalls and sheds, I was the only blonde in sight, and was gawked at. Kids pushed wheelbarrows full of toothbrushes/ oranges/ underwear/ hair gel. Beautifully traditionally dressed Indian Guatemalan women in bright costume were sitting on the floor with their vegies. Manuel kept saying 'Australian' to everyone we walked past who obviously were asking where we were from. There were fried iguanas.

Manuel with a fried iguana

The fresh produce sections were about 100 times the size of the Vic Market. We walked through about 200 metres of a shed which was only the Oranges section. Then 200m of onions, then spices and nuts, then limes. Talk about assault on the senses. We bought seven avocados for $AUD 1, a pound of strawberries for $1, two pineapples for $1. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries, and the charger has been stolen!

Took this fruit back to the hostel and all made smoothies together in the kitchen, and ate a mysterious fruit with a spoon (it looked & had the texture of like an avocado but pink, with a creamy sweet lychee/kiwi flavour, I think it was some kind of sapote.) That night Scott and I were going to walk out to find some dinner when Jodie freaked us out about the dangerousness (how long are you going for? when should I get worried? Walk fast and only on this path, wear your hood to cover your blond hair, etc.) So we ended up just going to Maccas 50 metres down the road!

Manuel dropped us at the airport early the next morning for our flight to Peru. I so highly recommend Quetzalroo, they really care about your experience in the city!