3-11 Rio Dulce, Flores, and Tikal, Guatemala

After leaving Stewart and the comfort of Casa Nostra, the four of us took a scenic boat ride to Rio Dulce. The river is stunning and quite diverse. Here are some examples:

We passed Casa Nostra on the shore of Livingston:









In Rio Dulce we caught a bus up to Flores, a small town on an island near Tikal, the major sight to see in Guatemala. The bus was packed. Every seat was filled, and as many people were crammed in the aisle. People were sitting on the dashboard and on the steps, and we kept stopping to pick up more passengers. Imagine a packed subway train, for four hours. Definitely an experience. Needless to say, we were relieved when we made it to Flores. We then found a great, and really cheap, guesthouse, where we spent 4 nights. The guesthouse does not yet have a name. Our host explained she wants to call it something Mayan, but neither she, nor anyone she knows speak Mayan. She also told us the terrace of her building is too high, and while she would like to have a restaurant, the town won't let her get any permits without first demolishing her terrace. I think there's probably more to the story, but for us, we were glad to have an amazing view of the town and the lake - her terrace is one of the highest points of the city, second only to the church.

Partially flooded road in Flores:



View from our hotel:





The next morning we awoke at 3:30am to take an early bus to Tikal. Since it gets so hot during the day, we wanted to make sure we had enough time to see everything and hike around before noon. Tikal was one of the last Mayan cities to fall to the Spaniards because of its remote jungle location. Only a small fraction of the city has been excavated, but it's still approximately 10km on walking to see it all.



Caryl and Francois, remembering old travels:











View from the highest temple:



This is what the temples look like before they are restored:



And one more:



In addition to the awe inspiring ruins, the jungle is equally impressive. We heard howling monkeys (they sound like T Rex from Jurassic Park), saw spider monkeys, and these guys:



But I was most amazed by the leaf cuter ants. We traced their path a bit and they were carrying leaves for at least a 100 yards before we lost them in the jungle. They create highways, and ants from different locations carry various organic materials back to their ant hill for fermentation by a special fungus that produces their food.

Close-up of ants:



Ant highways merging:



And of course, lots and lots of other bugs:


This picture should be rotated 90 degrees.

And, these plants are pretty cool - they don't need soil to survive:



Overall, we highly recommend Tikal. We agree it's the most impressive of all the sites we've seen. You can climb a number of the structures, there's jungle shade, and it's massive. We debated going again the next day, but decided one full day was just enough.

Over the next few days we did some chores and explored Flores and Santa Elena, the neighboring city. I've been needing to buy some more shorts (hard to find in the US in January), so while looking for a clothing store, we stopped by a thrift store, which are everywhere. Apparently, they receive unwanted clothes from the US in huge bundles, and sell things super cheap (I got 3 brand name pants for under 4 dollars). We heard from locals that sometimes whole shipping containers filled with clothes are actually stolen off of cargo ships and sold in Guatemala. Not sure if this is related, but our hand-made pillows in the guesthouse were also filled with clothes.

The stores are pretty decent though:



And here are a few more pictures of Flores:





Poor little things! Sold for about two dollars each (at least that was the price we were quoted):



On our last night with Francois and Angela, we made a dinner of guacamole and tuna salad. Two additional Frenchmen had just arrived, so we invited them to join us. Our host came up for a bit as well - it was a great night. We used all our combined languages to communicate, Spanish, English, French, and German. Except for Polish; it was not helpful in this case.

Here we are:



The next day, Francois and Angela left for Mexico, our new French friends went to Tikal, and Caryl and I headed back to Belize.


P.S. Don't forget to check out the Where in the World are We link located at the top of the page, just under the title. Caryl has been working hard on gps tracking our progress.