Flores and Tikal

There is always something exciting about crossing country borders: will things be the same? How are the people? How safe is it? How are the roads? Did I miss the immigration office? The last question was relevant in this particular case, as the physical border was quite distinct from the administrative border: a 3 minute boat ride took me across the Usamacinta river, changing cash was easy (having the exchange rate saved on my phone helped in negotiating), but because the border crossing was so remote the immigration office was about 10 km up the road. Or, it was hard to call it a "road", as it was a rough welcome with hills across very very rough gravel. The video I uploaded isn't nearly the worse part— the bobbing up and down (this is actually a stabilized video) is what it was like for 30 km in total, and it got worse—the video was taken when I finally reached the immigration building after 10 km. Had something of a chat with the immigration officers who wanted to know about my bike, and not too far further up the road I got to the first real difference: Chocobananas in a small roadside tienda! I had heard if these chocofrutas, hadn't seen them anywhere in mexico, and in Guatemala they seem to be really a thing to be found throughout: frozen fruit, dipped in chocolate. Its really good, with no plastic waste either. Of which there is plenty.

The gravel turned better and eventually turned into tarmac, and I decided to make it a long day in the saddle. (It was hard.) Ended up in La Libertad, took a very shitty hotel, and found another new thing for dinner that I had been wanting to try: Pupusas. Basically, fried filled tortillas. Really heavy but a reliable vegetarian option(!) The hotel was a horrible choice though, as there were a lot of cockroaches walking around to greet me when I got back after dinner and there was mold on all the walls; a thing to note is to not rely on these shitty places and take time to find decent accommodation. For the rest part of the route, I have kind of planned ahead.

The next day it was only a short ride to a tourism hotspot: picturesque Flores and nearby Tikal. Flores is a small cute little island lying of Santa Elena, and there is only tourism here; tourism that makes it a safe option to chill for a while and have (hopefully) good food, opportunities to watch the culture mismatch (lots of Dutchies here!), and have a hostel with AC, drinking water, decent showers, and no cockroaches.

Flores used to be a maja city itself, Nojpetén, and was actually very long-lasting — a lot longer than Tikal — even withstanding attacks from the Spanish conquerors for nearly 150 years from the first attacks, until it was successfully destroyed (that's what the Spanish wanted after all, wasn't it?) Now it is a popular tourist town for checking out nearby ruins in the jungle, and that's also the primary reason I came here. For visiting tikal you have to lay down quite some $$, and there are multiple options, including (paying maximum price and) getting up at the inhumane hour of 2.20 am to do a sunrise tour and watch the sun rise from on of the highest temple. Naturally, because I have to do some crazy shit this trip, I went for this option; also to see if the hype is justified.

However, I fucked up the evening before by eating from the wrong street food stand (I really should have known better and not have trusted her), which upset my stomach and kept me awake until 12 am. Me worrying about food is really a theme I would love to do without in this trip. Hence, my preparation of the ungodly early pickup time was as bad as it gets, and although I was doing reasonably well at the start, I was barely able to stay awake at the end of the tour. And, I learned that I didn't know enough of food poisoning, bacteria, food-safety, etc; you're always supposed to learn something life-changing on trips like these so I count that in.

Alright, Tikal: the sunrise was nice indeed, I saw a tucan and yellow-breasted falcon waking up, and we were there before the loud monkeys got to do there thing. I also realized I thought the sunrise had happened before it did, apparently, because I thought it was done before it had happened. Our tour guide was the most enthusiastic you can imagine about the spider monkeys around and the different birds to be seen, and tried his best explaining the very cool astronomical layout of the temples that the Mayans set up: they are laid out so that by cross-referencing the temples and sunrise, the time of the year can be determined, and their calendar is really advanced and interesting. (However, I think he got some details wrong.) Also, the pyramids are set up to echo sounds, demonstrated with clapping; "Tikal" is interpreted to mean "the place of the voices". And having watched the National Geographic documentary on Tikal (and its fall) before also helped me bother him some more with some questions, which ended up being quite interesting. For example, one of the last rulers (chocolate head? I don't know his name) was massively obese, which was determined by scientists to be because of bacteria in the water around the palace. And here all or some of the temples are also actually layered, being built by multiple generations over previous generations to celebrate new battles, or just as acts of pure vanity. Not sure what else to say about Tikal, other than that it is really, really big, and I'm glad I visited it.

I'm not entirely sure yet if I'll leave tomorrow or the day after, in any case I calculated that visiting Belize by bike and doing some diving will make me short on time, so I have decided to go straight south to Semuc Champey. This way I won't miss the parts in Guatemala I wanted to visit.Read more