Anna woke up at 9am and found out that breakfast was soon stopping so woke me up. I got up and stepped out the door to be greeted by the most beautiful view of the lake right across the road from the back of the hotel (hadn't noticed last night). We had breakfast of bread, beans and banana (plus the standard egg neither of us can eat). A different receptionist was on and happily gave us the key to the room with a terrace and lake view, a much brighter, airier room. Easily the best room in the place.
After a rest for Anna to ‘wake up’ we went for an explore. Still hungry from our lack of food yesterday, I got a lovely coconut ice cream (9Q) and then we walked around Flores which is a small island connected to the mainland by a 500m causeway. It's a really beautiful little place, one we weren't expecting. Anna was searching for an iced coffee (despite already having 2 cups with breakfast) so we ended up in Cool Beans cafe and shared some nachos.
We had to walk back across the bridge to the mainland to find an ATM that worked. My Caxton card finally worked for the first time in over a month - yey! Then we booked our tour tomorrow and journey to Belize the following day.
We got a small boat (40Q return for both) to a tiny island about 500m in front of our hotel which has a museum (20Q) and a few houses on it. The museum is just a tiny room full of lots of Mayan artifacts and some old radio equipment. I lost interest after 10 minutes and played with the cat ‘curator’. We were the only ones there and had an amazing, cold, humongous coconut for 5Q each. Since they were so cheap and good I had another one. Our young boat man picked us up and took us back and there was a loud procession of vehicles promoting candidates for the upcoming election. Interestingly they were mostly full of young people.
We checked out a few restaurants but they were quite pricey and nothing special. A guy groped Anna's bum in one and we promptly left (after she yelled at him) to avoid smacking him in the face. The guys here are a bit odd - very stary; the coffee tour guy apparently warned Anna about them. We ended up getting some street food to share - drinks, soft & hard rolled tacos, plus some open tacos with unknown toppings (one apparently was ceviche, which I liked). Nothing amazing but filling and all for 25Q with a view of the sun setting over the lake.
We fetched Anna a beer from the supermarket to add to her collection of lids and then tried to get an early night in preparation for our early start tomorrow.Read more
Guatemala
