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I left Antigua after 4 great weeks and caught a bus with 2 of the guys I met at the Spanish school, to Flores. Bus trip was good, great to listen to my iPod again and just chill out.
Flores is on an Island in Lake Peten Itza in Guatemala. Niall, John and I met Stefan there who had left the day before us. We stayed at a great hostel. Flores is really close to Tikal - it is an ancient ruined city of the Mayan people. It dates back to the 4th century BC! So pretty old..older than Machu Picchu in Peru.
The idea was to go to the ruins at 3am in the morning and walk through the jungle and sit on top of one of the ruins and watch the sun come up and hear the forest wake up...howler monkeys etc etc. So we go up at 3am and had about an hour bus ride to the park. At the gate, in the pouring rain, the guards or guides or whoever they were, put people in groups...you could only have about 15 people per guide. In the end there were 5 of us left over and they told us we could not go in unless we paid another 100 Quetzals....?!?! To cut a very long story short we argued and eventually after about half an hour they let us in with a guide on the proviso we would pay at the end...by the way we had already paid the full fee the day before. So 30 - 45 minutes later there we were trudging through the jungle in the rain, no sound of any animals and the sun already coming up...so much for this magical experience we were all expecting. WE eventually go to the ruins when everyone else was coming down. There was no sunrise to be seen as there was so much rain and clouds and no animals were waking up...what a disappointment...but it was funny anyway!
WE spent the next couple of hours seeing various temples and pyramids which were pretty amazing....
At the end of the trip some of the guides or officials or someone came up to us to explain what had happened earlier, and there seems to be lots of funny goings on with the various parties involved in this park....too long and complicated to explain! Apparently they have been holding back tourist for the last month and doing the same thing...in the end we wrote some kind of petition thing and refused to pay more money. Apparently there were government officials at the gate watching this all go on and they were taking photos of us?!?!
Anyway the following day I said goodbye to the boys as they headed to Belize and I headed to Rio Dulce (still in Guatemala) All in all a great time in Flores & Tikal...will upload photos soon
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