Saturday, April 6th, 2019, Flores, Guatemala

Day 08 of Mayan Discovery by G-adventures tour

Todays G-adventures itinerary:

“Learn about Mayan culture and history on a guided tour of Tikal archaeological site. Relax on Lake Petén Itzá with a boat cruise or a swim.

Tikal Ruins Guided Tour Tikal 3h-4h 7-15km

Put on your walking shoes and prepare for a tiring but memorable day walking through history at the impressive site of Tikal. The Mayan site is set in the heart of the jungle, in Tikal National Park, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Along with our bilingual guide, see some of the temples, plazas, carved stone monuments and public squares, more than 3,000 buildings in all, dating from as far back as 600 BC. Climb to the top of Temple IV, catch your breath, take photos, and then sit and contemplate the magnificence of the site and the tropical rainforest beyond. Look for monkeys, anteaters, armadillos, and deer, as well as macaws and eagles, snakes, and spiders

Free Time San José Afternoon

Enjoy the area around the lake.“

We decided yesterday to do Yaxha ruins instead if Tikal today and the sunset cruise in the evening. The Tikal ruins we will do tomorrow on our way to San Igancio.

The Yaxhal ruins are an extra 350 Quetzal pP, the sunset boat cruise on lake Petèn Itza 150 pP. Breakfast and dinner, drinks on the boat not included.

Music in the Discotheque next to the hotel played loud until 1:00 am. Suddenly it was out. Any further noise was followed by a short police horn and silenced immediately. Now we know why we had glass in front of the bakcony, too. The aircon works perfectly, no wind, cool air. The WiFi of the hotel is shit.

We get up early and meet in the lobby at 6:00 am and leave. We drive one hour and stop by at a breakfast place (el arbol restaurante) where we preordered breakfast. The granola with fuits and yoghurt has seen a spoon of yoghurt, the toast and the papaya marmelade are fine, the coffee in guatemala coffee land is made out of nescafe powder. downfall. The Zarandal smoothie (papaya – in season now, carrots, strawberry and banana) is delicious. The breakfast ist rather expensive, I pay 150 Quetzales. The WiFi is super.

As soon as we found all participants of our group and collected them in the bus we continue to Yaxha ruins another hour drive.

At the Yaxha ruins our tour guides sends us to the toilets and we get an all inclusive clubbing wrist band. then we do the tour approximately 3 hrs. He is very informative, the areal is huge, no people at all, wooden stairs to climb the huge platforms and pyramids, nice views to the lake. it is hot and humid.

As we are done, we drive back to Flores and Hotel Peten. We shower and decide to go to the market. Before we try the ceviche right next to our hotel. The ceviche classic is fine (only shrimps), the Colombian have fire in it. I pick out all the green stuff and the red powder, still it feels like humidity is pressed out of my body everywhere.

Then we follow the others to the market, which is more a textile market, at the end some fruits and veggies. We split. Good luck, as the tomb raider gets bombarded with stones by an old Mayan lady to protect the Mayan gold.

We get more money from the ATM (600 cezales for eur, the exchange rate is 8.0, yesterday it was 8.5, we learned you need to choose your bank here carefully).

Then we go back through Flores, get drinks, sit on the lakes bank and wait to 4.30 PM, when the pickup for the lake cruise will start.

The boat is more a swimming platform with 2 bluetooth speakers, a cooling box and a outboard motor. Later on a LED multicolored light band will complete the attempt to put us into extasis mode. Cloudy sky prevents most of us from swimming, using the 10 Quetzales rope jump or falling into extasis to ABBA music. Martyn and Chris jump, we watch. The beer is ice, there is not a lot of alcohol in it. The Hibiscus with rum and the tequila shot do not bring me up, too.

The full board provided to some if us makes me happy to starve. We leave the boat and walk to the fish restaurant (La Villa del Chef) we have been yesterday and I get a papaya water smoothie and a lake fish again. It is very delicious.

I have an ABBA infection, my brain still tries to digest the music from the party boat causing waves of headache. We donot join the others form icecream (good faith, as they will vomit it tomorrow, ah’cacao’s revenge (the most prominent lord of the tikal maya tribe).

Tonights music in my room is even worse. Americans do Beatles – hey jude karaoke, followed my a multi voice, english Mexican dialect chorus of bohemian rhapsody, I wait hopefully for 1 am, when the police will shut them down again. Until then I enjoy like a virgin, madonna, most of the other songs I cannot identify, mostly not even the language. Fortunately somewhen before 1 am my brain decides to loose consciousness. I fall into a deep blue hole …

Accommodation Hotel Petén, Flores, San Jose, Guatemala