Athalia and Brenda’s Excellent Guatemalan Adventure, Vol. 2

After two and a half beautiful days in Izabal, Brenda and I took one of the most disgusting buses that I have ever sat in (and I have been on a lot of dirty buses) for four hours up to Flores, Peten. Flores, a town on an island, is the departmental capital of Peten and is like Antigua in its touristy-ness. The island is small and is covered in hotels and restaurants, with a beautiful promenade all around for people to enjoy the breezes from the lake. Unfortunately for me, I felt horrible essentially the whole time we were in Peten, so I did not enjoy the restaurant offerings or the view too much. When we arrived in Flores, Brenda and I had a quick lunch and then crashed in our hotel with AC and slept most of the afternoon. In the evening, we headed out and the weather was tolerable. We made reservations for the 4:30am shuttle to Tikal the next day.

My favorite time of day temperature-wise in Peten is pre-sunrise, at 4:30am it was cool and comfortable.With just about every other tourist from Flores, we arrived at Tikal at 6am and headed out on a tour with a Spanish-speaking guide. The benefits of speaking Spanish were twofold for us – we convinced the tour guides that we should only be charged national price for entering the park (Q25 versus Q150), and the Spanish tour was significantly smaller than the English tour, so the tour was long and the guide explained a lot.

We started out near a big tree, and I have no recollection of its name or its importance, I just remember that it is tall…full disclosure, I do not recall all too much from the tour – it from 6:30am to 12:00pm and from 10am onwards it felt like 100-degrees hot thanks to the humidity, so my retention was not too high, but the photos speak for themselves.

With a big tree

Next to a tablet

Not sure what we were supposed to see at the tablet, it had a figure carved onto it and the face was destroyed because it was the common practice to destroy the face once a person died. Midway through the explanation at the tablet we were all distracted by monkeys in the trees!

Atop Pyramid IV, the tallest in Tikal

One of the first stops on the tour was Pyramid IV, the tallest pyramid in Tikal, I do not remember how tall it was, but the guide told us we had to climb or it was like we never went to Tikal at all. From the top we had a nice panorama of the forest and some of the other pyramids we would visit later.

The panorama

We walked to a place called the Plaza of Cultures where we saw a neat mammal eating in the trees, so once again I did not really listen, but there was a pyramid that is notable because it is similar to pyramids built by the Aztecs in Teotihuacan (outside of Mexico City). It is the tablero(?) – the rectangles with boders – that is Teotihuacan-esque, which is interesting since the Aztecs were post-Mayan and were far away.

The reason I did not pay attention. So cute. He kept eating, pausing to scratch himself, and then ate some more.

More pyramids

Another pyramid with cool comb on top, no way to get closer

We covered around 7km walking, so we did not really spend too much time at any of the pyramids, we walked around and took photos and then the tour went on. While I think the tour was good for purposes of not getting lost, it was a pity that we did not get to spend more time exploring some of the partially excavated pyramids, or sit in an area with pyramids all around.

Half-excavated pyramid

This is the only pyramid in Tikal with rounded edges, pretty cool.

One of the pyramids we were allowed to climb, but first, a photo op.

The only way up – steep wooden stairs

Most of the pyramids were undergoing restoration, or due to deterioration (having a rope to help people climb deteriorated the steps) had the main steps inaccessible, instead wooden steps were constructed on the side and one climbed those. It was convenient since there were railings, but in other ruins where climbing the main stairs was allowed it was definitely a lot more satisfying. These steps were super steep and cause vertigo for some tourists who go up and then cannot get down.

Seeing the Grand Plaza from atop the pyramid

With the pyramid that we climbed in the background

Grand Plaza

The tour ended at the Grand Plaza, a plaza that had palaces on two sides and two pyramids on the other two sides. It was a beautiful plaza and the tour guide had us close our eyes as well walked out and then open them to take in this view.

Grand Plaza from another angle

Enjoying the view

My stomach hurt most of the day in Tikal so by the end of the tour I did not want to walk and let Brenda visit the palaces while I sat still. Brenda diagnosed my mysterious pain as due to insemination by an alien atop Pyramid IV.

Atop one pyramid looking to the other in the Grand Plaza.

At 1:30pm we arrived back in Flores and once again slept for a couple hours. Honestly, it is just too hot, there is nothing better to do during daylight. In the evening we went out to eat and met up with a girl we had met back in Río Dulce.

Sunset in Flores

We stayed an extra day in Flores, dipping in the lake, doing some shopping, and trying to move as little as possible to minimize sweating. Overall I would say that Peten was definitely worth a visit, but I would need a few years to pass before going back (wait for global climate change to make it cool off a bit). For anyone planning on visiting, I highly recommend finding a hotel with AC, sunscreen, and bug spray.

Getting in the lake - Flores, Peten

On our last day in Flores, my camera lens malfunctioned and has not righted itself…so I have not been able to take photos for around two weeks nowL I hope that a photo shop in Antigua will be able to fix it to document my sister’s visit, or I will have to invest in a new one.

Thanks to Brenda for coming out to visit and being willing to get some serious mileage in. I hope to get a job post-PC in another exciting/exotic location so we can do it againJ

Next: Vera and Mirit come to Guatemala, increasing the Jewish population by magnitudes and brightening my life even more!

Athalia and Brenda’s Excellent Guatemalan Adventure, Vol. 1

Earlier this month I got a visit from an OG of my blog-dom – Brenda, who accompanied me on my internship and travels around Bolivia. Brenda and I are good traveling partners since I am an excellent planner and Brenda knows how to have a good time, helping me stop stressing out to enjoy the plans I made. What made this trip with Brenda even more exciting for me is that we were going to visit two parts of the country I have always wanted to visit but did not get the chance to see yet – Izabal on the Caribbean Coast and Peten in the far north. The first stop on our trip was Antigua for a night’s rest before heading out bright and early to Río Dulce next to the Lago of Izabal.

Getting excited on the first 6 hour bus ride

We headed out at 6am on a really nice bus – Litegua – and by midday we had arrived in Río Dulce. The hotel we were staying at, Casa Perico – highly recommendations, is not in Río Dulce proper (which did not look like much of a town to be honest) but on a side inlet. In order to get there we had to take a ten-minute boat ride and passed all sorts of beautiful hotels and rich peoples’ vacation homes on the way. Apparently Río Dulce is one of the safest places for boats during the hurricane season, so lots of people with yachts haunt the area. Just to clarify, Río Dulce is both the name of a town and also the name of the river that leaves Lake Izabal and heads out to the Caribbean at Livingston. So we stayed on the river and went up and down it to visit different places, we did not see these places from walking through town.

Rio Dulce

The day we arrived in Río Dulce it was raining, but Brenda and I didn’t let that stop us and as soon we dropped off our bags, we headed out on a private boat to visit the Castillo de San Felipe – a Castle built in the 1500s by the Spaniards to stop pirates from stealing off of the boats heading out to the Caribbean. The castle worked, and later served as a jail, before falling into disrepair. In the 1950s it was reconstructed and it is really sceinic with Lake Izabal on one side and Río Dulce starting on the other side.

Looking at the Castle from Río Dulce

The castle itself is pretty small, but it had plenty of neat dank corredors and open plazas to take photos and do some exploring.

Really excited to have arrived!

Brenda joined in on the excitement

Right outside of the castle with Lake Izabal in the background

Last one, I promise. Jumping off a cannon

The next day was probably my favorite of the whole trip – we went to Livingston, a garifuna (Afro-Guatemalan) town on the coast of the Caribbean at the mouth of the Río Dulce. In order to get to Livingston, we had to go on a boat ride for around an hour and a half to get to Livingston, passing by small townships, rich peoples’ houses, a canyon and Aguas Calientes.

In Aguas Calientes on Río Dulce to Livingston

About halfway to Livingston we stopped at a place where a thermal hot spring comes out of the rocks in the river. A blockade was built to maintain the hot water together. When I first tried to step in I couldn’t because it was too hot, but our boat capitain told us that the secret is to move the water around, the hot water is only on the top, so when you move it a bit it cools off and is really pleasant.

House with a pila right on the edge of the river

We arrived in Livingston around 1030am and had until 3pm to see as much as we could. Livingston is famous for being a town dominated by Garifuna (though there are also indigenous people, Hindus, and ladinos). The Garifuna are a people that were kicked out of the Bay Islands in Honduras and are now found all up and down the Caribbean coast from Belize to Guatemala and Honduras. The Garifuna are ethnically a mix of Africans and the Carib people who populated the Caribbean Islands before they were killed off with the expansion of the Spanish Empire. The Garifunas are some of the poorest people in Guatemala, with the worst education rates and livelihoods. Despite this, Livingston is a hot tourist destination and its location is hard to beat – right on the beach. Brenda and I did not spend almost any time in the town itself, we wanted to visit a place up the beach called Siete Altares and so we headed to the beach to start walking almost immediately. One thing I did notice before we headed out to the beach was a sign about HIV/AIDS prevention – something that I had only seen in Belize, nowhere else in Guatemala. Since Livingston is close to Belize there might be higher susceptibility there, but I thought it was really cool that their was a big sign right in the middle of town to get people to use condoms.

HIV/AIDS Sign in the center of Livingston

We headed out at 11:30am walking up the beach and it was beautiful, though pretty polluted. There were tons of kids playing in the water, and there were coconut trees all over.

Kids on beach in Livingston

Flower in the water

More kids in the water

Walking on the beach

Coconut

We had been told that to get to Siete Altares (Seven Pools) it was a 1.5 hour walk. Brenda and I walked for a good hour and a half and arrived at a bridge where we saw a young man and asked him if we were close. Not even close, from the bridge was another hour he told us. Time was of the essence, but we were close, so we picked up the pace and made the rest of the journey with Roman, our new friend.

With Roman

Roman was heading to Siete Altares as well so we went together.

The end of the trip was pretty frantic, we didn’t get to Siete Altares til 1:30 or so, so we did not have much time to play in the pools. We walked past the seven pools (that were nice and full thanks to the rain from the day before) and dipped in one before running back to the bridge and in a taxi back to town. Siete Altares is a place where water flows through seven pools and it reminded me a bit of Semuc Champey in Alta Verapaz, though of the two Semuc is definitely more impressive.

At Siete Altares

It was and tiring day and I wished I had planned for one more day in Livingston since we didn’t get to spend much time in Siete Altares and didn’t get to eat the typical Livingstonian food ‘Rice and Beans,’ a personal favorite from my time in Belize.

But all good things come to an end, as does this first volume of Athalia and Brenda’s excellent Guatemalan adventure. Coming soon, part 2 where Athalia and Brenda go to the land of Mayan Temples, 100% humidity, and a town in a lake.