Quest to See the World

Well, I made it out of Mexico on Thursday afterall with the help of some wonderful Brits, Milli and Alan. Later that night after i thought i was stuck in mexico for another day, my cabin mate, Kathy, invited me to dinner with some people she had met at the ruins that day. It turned out that Milli and Alan, who were at dinner, were also headed to Tikal the next day. I mentioned my dilemma and they also got worried that they would have to pay the exit tax and hadn´t, so Milli went and talked to the travel agent and he said that they most likely had it included in their plane ticket and that i could pay at the border. i then went and spoke to the agent and he assured me that i could pay at the border, but i didn´t have enough pesos on me and i wasn´t staying in town so i couldn´t go to an atm before leaving in the morning. milli said that they could lend me the money until we got to guate and i could pay them back in guatemalan quetzales, so i booked the trip with only 10 minutes to spare before the agency closed.

the trip was quite interesting. first we took a fancy air conditioned bus to a river where we got onto a cool little boat and rode down the river for 30 minutes. All went well up until that point. after we got on the guate side of the river we had to wait 1.5 hours until the bus left. it got there after about 30 minutes after we did, but we had to wait until more people showed up so they´d have enough people for the trip. it was a nice relaxing spot though and we got a break and chatted with fellow travelers. finally we were off, or so we thought.  we got onto the bus and rode up the road for about 5km or so to the immigration office and while we were there, and almost done with everyone, the immigration official got a call from someone down by the river advising that more people had arrived which meant that the bus was going back to pick them up and would return for us. it took off back to the river and i was again left hoping that i would see my bag again, i wasn´t actually too worried about it, but it did cross my mind. eventually the bus came back with more passengers and we had to wait for them to go through immigration too. well wouldn´t you know it, one of the kids didn´t have a passport which held us up longer. finally after a while, we were on the road again. i wasn´t bothered at all really, but did want to make it to flores sooner rather than later. it was a very hot day, around 40 degrees celsius which is around 104 fahrenheit and really high humidity!!!!! what a big change from xela where i was freezing at night, but i´m not complaining because i´d rather be hot than cold any day.

so we were on our way again on a bumpy dirt road in a non-air conditioned bus. they say that they have to use that bus because of the road and they wouldn´t want to drive a new bus on that road everyday. sure. at first it was okay, but the after a while the bumpy road was too much. we were on there for 2 hours and when we hit the beginning of the pavement everyone on the bus clapped. it was funny. the supposed 8 hour trip ended up taking 11 hours because the guy kept stopping. he was also heavily pushing other services on us the whole time. it was quite annoying. so we finally made it to flores at around 5pm.

i´m staying at hospedaje dona goya II which is a really nice, clean place. i have a private room with private, hot water bath and indirect view of the lake for only $8. it´s such an improvement over the last couple of places i stayed!!  so many people online have written that they didn´t like flores, but i love it. it´s really pretty here. the hotel also has a rooftop terraza with hammocks and tables and chairs for playing cards, which alan, milli and i did last night overlooking the lake.

after the long journey i decided that i could take a little break here and didn´t go to tikal (more mayan ruins) until today. yesterday i slept in until 7:22, which is now sleeping in for me, and look a stroll around town. i was interested in this place named ARCAS that´s a rehabilitation center for animals that they save from the black market or that people have in there homes or just turn up injured. they´re supposed to have monkeys and jaguars and all sorts of cool animals. while i was strolling along, there was a guy with his boat asking if i was needing to go to the zoo on the other side of the lake and i told him that i was interested in going to ARCAS. he said that it would be $7.50, so i was going to see if milli and alan were interested, but in the meantime, as i was walking away i heard some guy asking about going to the zoo. i talked the guy into going to ARCAS instead and we split the fare. once we got over there, a guy working there was at the dock and explained that it would be $1.25 to see the visitor area that had some birds, monkeys and small jungle cats and another $6.50 to go inside where most of the animals are that are still being treated before being released back into the wild. i was cool with it, but the other guy didn´t have enough money and just wanted to see the visitor area. well, to make a long story short, after seeing the caged animals that have been too domesticated to be released back into the wild, the guy changed his story and said that the volunteers are working with the animals and i couldn´t go inside. i was soooo super disappointed. i really wanted to see them. i did see some monkeys that were quite interested in us, hanging on the fence right in front of us, following us along the way as we moved from one side of the cage to another, and some beautiful macaws and toucans, one with a big chunk of the beak missing though.

along the way of the tour, the guy working there asked the other guy (who was guatemalan) what kind of work he did because he said that he was just here in flores for the day and didn´t even know that he´d be coming. he said that he worked in ¨valores.¨ i wasn´t sure what that meant, so on the boat ride back he was asking me what kind of work i do at home so, i asked him what it meant that he worked in ¨valores.¨ he said that he delivers thousands of dollars to people and once he arrived in flores that morning he made his delivery and had the rest of the day free and was returning to guatemala city on a bus that night. how shady is that???

the rest of the day was relaxing and very hot again. today i got up at 4:30 to go the ruins. the van got a flat tire on the way and when the driver was changing it, a few of us tourists decided to take a pic of him, but he wasn´t too happy about it. he was a bit grumpy. maybe the fact that there was another flat tire on the roof had something to do with that.

tikal was the nicest set of ruins so far. i even got to see some more monkeys, this time in the wild. i just love monkeys!!! the place was very empty and very hot again. after we were done seeing everything we headed to the exit to wait for the bus back. unfortunately there´s only one company that runs shuttles to tikal and eventually there were about 40 people waiting on a shuttle that fit about 15. we had been waiting for around 45 minutes by the time the thing showed up and had to make a mad dash for it. it was chaos, but we did get on with the help of milli´s useful british feistiness.

so i´ve been hanging out with milli and alan for 3 days and tomorrow we go our separate ways. they´re really awesome, hilarious people. today when we were waiting on the bus they were teaching me how to say a few things w- their accent, or trying to teach me anyway because i didn´t do too well. it was quite funny. later in the day milli and i took a dip in the lake to cool off. another relaxing day.

tomorrow i´m heading to finca ixobel outside of poptun. it´s a working organic farm in the forest that has bungalows, dorms and treehouses. there are jungle hiking trails around, horse back riding and some other cool excursions offered. sounds interesting. i´m just going to do one night there to break up the trip to the south a bit. from there i´ll be headed to the rio dulce area and down the river to livingston. my guatemalan excursion should end in a few days when i make my way back into honduras.

sorry this entry isn´t full of excitement, but i needed to update, but am extremely tired since i got up so early this morning. talk to you all later.  

 

 

Tags: Central America 2007, flores, Guatemala, tikal

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 14th, 2007 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Central America 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.