We had only planned to spend three nights in Flores then move onto Belize however food poisoning changed our plans and we are about to spend our sixth night here, but hopefully moving on tomorrow.

Flores is a small island, linked to the mainland by a large bridge, situated in Lago Peten Itza. It's pretty quiet and there don't seem to be that many tourists here. Most stay just to access Tikal (see next blog entry) so are away in the day. It's quite pretty and doesn't take long to walk around. I've noticed that it is very clean here compared to the rest of Guatemala as there is no litter (they just chuck it out on the side of the roads normally as people are employed to pick it up, although I think they've easily got enough work for a good few years yet).

We managed to make it here last Friday on another long eight-hour tourist shuttle on some more windy roads with many many speed bumps (they're so unneccessary!). We'd already felt the food poisoning a bit in Semuc Champey but it caught up with us properly on Friday evening after we arrived so consequently we have been doing very little since. The budget is looking healthy though as we've also not really eaten much! Some early achievements included getting our laundry done and a bit of internetting. Other than that, we've fully utilised the hammocks on the terrace of where we're staying.

Yesterday we both felt a bit better so managed a slightly busier schedule. We caught a small boat over to an island about 200m away where there is a small museum (about the size of a large shed) full of Mayan artefacts and a few other bits. A lot are original but there were also some replicas of things that are in Mayan sites in Guatemala and Mexico. We had a very cheerful, enthusiastic man show us round (all in Spanish) and he also quickly showed us the local radio station, Radio Peten, which is housed on the island (you can listen via Facebook apparently so anyone can check it out!). After that we went on a boat ride around the lake.

Yesterday was suddenly a lot more hot and humid so after the boat ride we cooled off in a cafe with a drink. In Guatemala they do excellent lemonade and licuados which are basically fruit liquidised with water or milk. We've had a lot of these as they can be quite cheap: a massive glass from about 85p! Someone, somewhere is getting rich on selling blenders to the entire cafe population.

Our other achievements yesterday included booking the tour to Tikal Mayan ruins- the reason we've come here- and both of us finishing our dinner last night.

Katy