Flores and Tikal

So myself and the travelling crocs now find themselves in sunny Guatemala. And my short time here has definitely been full of adventure it has to be said. (check out the Crocs on that Mayan Temple...!!)

After spending a morning in Belize City (at the not so luxurious Princess Hotel) i jumped on a plane to Flores which would be my home for the next few days. Its a tiny airport i have to say, which was a good thing as i was arriving in a 6 seater Cesena (Mum you would've hated it!!). We'd had fantastic views of Lago Peten Itza for much of the flight and got a proper birdseye view of Flores from the air as we came into land. (the pics are on facebook if you want to check them out.) The first thing that struck me as i got out of the plane was how hot it was. I know it'd been pretty toasty in Belize but i guess you forget how much difference a sea breeze really does make. This was that stifling heat that really whacks you in the face. I strolled through immigration (i dont even really think the passport stamping man even looked at my passport) and the next major obstacle to overcome was the scrum of taxi drivers that mobbed you as you left the airport building. Bit like a load of paps when an A lister stumbles out of some nightclub slightly the worse for wear. The lucky recipient of my business was a chap called Ismal who i have to admit spoke pretty good English (we all know that my Spanish is virtually non existent which became very apparent when trying to buy a mobile phone this afternoon... more of that later!) Ismal wasted no time in asking if i was here to go and see the ruins in Tikal (everyone that comes here is basically on the way to see the Mayan Ruins) and we promptly arranged (after some haggling) for him to pick me up at 6am the following morning for the trip. The earlier the better he said as it would be very hot there... and he wasnt kidding. $30.... not bad for 3 hours in his taxi and him sitting around waiting for me for 5 hours while i stumbled around the Temples.

He dropped me off at Hotel Santana which again i have to say was very decent, if not a little pricey for this part of the world. However it had good AC in the room (which was a must given the heat) bathroom with hot water, safe, little balcony overlooking the lake - all pretty top notch. And i then thought it was time to go and do what any seasoned (well semi-seasoned in my case) traveller should do when in a new boiling hot country - find a bar and get a beer! Hotel la Villa del Chef - huge sunset bar overlooking the lake - perfect. And also rather cheap (sunset happy hour 5-7pm 8Q a cerveza, thats around £0.70 in real money) Sitting watching the sun go down over the lake i have to admit that i thought i could all get rather used to this travel lark. It was all pretty relaxing watching the fishing boats coming back from a days fishing and bizarrely hundreds of bats flying out of the town across the lake for a busy night catching things (thats my only real complaint of Central America so far, there are a huge amount of flying things that really want to take a nip out of you - most annoying) Dinner of chicken rice and beans (a Guatemalan classic and damn good) and early to bed so that i could be up with the lark for my trip to Tikal.

6am and there sat outside the Hotel was Ismal in his taxi for the one and half hour drive to Tikal. It was as we got going that it struck me how incredibly poor this country really is. Much as Flores is definitely not the richest little town i've ever stayed in (theyre digging up all the cobbled roads there at the moment aswell which seems to be causing a hell of alot of agro, bit like they are in Clapham only its a bit hotter in Flores!) compared to the villages you drive through, well Flores definitely has it good. And it has water which alot of these villages dont. They have to save the rainwater they get in October and November to last them as long as they can. Things apparently are getting a bit better as the Guatemalan Government is presently connecting them to a pipeline from Lake Peten (which really isnt that far away) and at a guess i presume thats what all the road digging/pipelaying going on in Flores is all about. Anyway, i digress, most of the houses are corregated iron ontop of breeze blocks and the amount of times we had to swerve to miss livestock merrily ambling down the main road, well its a miracle we did kill a whole host of pigs, chickens, cows, goats etc etc on the way!

We eventually got to Tikal which i have to say is one of the most awesome places i've defintely had the pleasure of seeing. I'm no culture vulture by any stretch of the immagination and really didnt know what to expect, i mean how impressive can a load of stone temples in a jungle really be?? The answer is very. For those that no nothing about Tikal the Mayans settled here around 700BC and after a load of real battles (alot of hack and slay going on back then) it became the main Mayan commercial, cultural and religious centre for about the next 1000 or so years. King Great Jaguar Paw (you got to love a good name like that) cottoned on that flint was a pretty handy tool for making spears and basically through his butal combat strategies (they used to surround their enemies and hurl a load of spears at them.... nice) they defeated everyone from the Yucatan Pennisula in Mexico, right through Belize and even down into Honduras. Impressive stuff. They also liked a Temple or two. And it is completely beyond me how they managed to build and maintain this huge civilisation in a pretty inhospitital part of the world (they estimate 150,000 people lived in Tikal at its peak.) What is also a bit odd is no one can come up with any real explanation as to why it all came to an end.... strange indeed.

So i stroll through the jungle, birds singing their heads off, monkeys howling (they have howler monkeys here, not that i saw one but you can certainly hear them) and leaping around (spider monkeys were the ones i got to see and take a few piccies of), damn hot and humid (even at 8am in the morning) and suddenly out of the blue you stumble across the back of Temple 1, all 44m of it. Crickey. As you turn the corner you are right into what the call the Great Plaza, Temple 1 facing a slightly smaller Temple 2 (only 38m, built by Lord Chocolate or Moon Double Comb for his lovely wife Lady Twelve Macaw, i'm not making these names up btw!) with a huge complex of temples to the north, funnily enough called the Northern Acropolis. The whole thing really is quite awe inspiring and leaves you wondering how this civilisation that existed here for almost 2000 years just disappeared without a trance without anyone really knowing it was there at all (it wasnt until 1877 that it was discovered and the whole excavation of the site and restoration of the temples as you see them today didnt properly start til the early1900s with most of the work happing in the 50s and 60s) I could go on about each individual Temple and all the various complexes of Palaces and Acropolises (plural of Acropolis, well something like that) but i really couldnt do it justice and i'm sure it would be rather dull for you all. That said the climb up Temple 4 which is the tallest at 69m and looks over all the other temples really was amazing (if not a little tiring and by then very hot work indeed) It took me around 5 hours to take in the whole site and after saying goodbye to the jungle (the last group on temples is called complexQ where apparently the high priest would sacrifice the odd person or two infront of an assembled crowd, just to keep them all in order and let them know that the Gods would be happy with them..... how very pleasant!) i staggered back to the car park to find Ismal and hopped back in the taxi for the drive back to Flores. All i can say is that if you are lucky enough to find yourself in this bit of the world, then a trip to Tikal is a must. You'll see what i mean when you get there.

We got back to Flores around 2 where i promptly collapsed into my air conditioned hotel room exhausted (and rather dehyrated!) After a gallon of water and a bit of a kip i thought i'd head out again for a few sunset beers (Coco Loco this time - a real rip off at 10Q a beer!) and a fantastic meal at La Luna (pork with a spicy pineapple sauce, should have got the recipe as it really was amazing, Jamie Oliver could learn a thing or two about cooking over here!!) I then decided i'd better try and sample the local nightlife, but in all honesty the only place i could find open was a sports bar showing Federer whipping someone else at tennis - not really what i had in mind. I figured given i was off to Antigua the following morning (i'd been warned the nightlife could get a little lively) i'd better call it a day and head home.


Friday was relatively uneventful - one last stroll around Flores to take in the Church (hugely impressive building ontop of the hill) and an omlet and beans for breccie at the aptly named Cool Beans restaurant. The only really annoying thing was that the internet cafe i was camped in merrily downloading photos onto facebook kept on losing its connection, which meant i kept on losing all the downloaded photos and had to start all over again, i got there in the end though after an awful lot of swearing!! And the other annoying thing was that my friendly taxi driver Ismal, who promised to be at the hotel at 2.30 to take me to the airport failed to materialise, i'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and think that maybe his little taxi had broken down, but in all honesty i'm guessing he got another trip out to Tikal and a $30 fare out there is much better than a 20Q to the airport (who can blame him really.) It did mean that i almost missed my flight though as taxi's werent as abundant as i thought they might be so i had a rather anxious dash through security and rushed onto the plane to Guatemala City cursing the afore mention Ismal! Alls well that ends well i guess.

So i'm now in Antigua Guatemala. Living with a family and a whole host of other travellers/volenteer workers (its sort of a bit like going back into student gigs but with some sort of parental guardians looking over you!) It a great crew, few Canadians, an Aussie, an Austrian, an American who is actually half Cuban, half Iranian and then a dutch couple and a Norweigen girl who i'm yet to meet. As you can guess its all rather lively and so far the only downside i've found is that we have to speak Spanish at mealtimes, which i'm not yet able to do (i have to sit and smile and nod rather alot!!) I'm told i'll pick it up very quickly which unless i'm destined to become some sort of mealtime mute i'm going to have to! Antigua itself would appear to be a very prosperous and happening town (you dont have to go back to many hundreds of years to find it was the capital of the whole of Central America) the only downside, which could be a saving grace for my liver, is that all bars and clubs close at 1am (how very un-Spanish is that??!!) Spanish lessons start tomorrow afternoon (4 hours a day for the next month) so by the time i'm typing up the next blog i'm hoping i'll be able to throw in more than a bit of Spanish - we'll have to wait and see.......

Off to breccie for me now (no doubt eggs and refried beans and some exceptionally good coffee) to try and get rid of this niggling headache i seem to have..... could it be something to do with me introducing my housemates to jaegerbombs last night???? Methinks it might!!

Until next time

B