guatemala

when we went to guatemala, we had even more fun. i love guatemala, so was very glad that i was able to take cameron there. guatemala is such a beautiful country. it is very green, and the people are so beautiful and kind. we spent our time in flores. flores is one of the most beautiful cities that i have ever seen, and we did not even plan to go there! we wanted to go to tikal, so decided to take a bus to san ignacio. although that sounds very simple, it ended up being very difficult. the person that was in charge of selling the tickets was indian. he did not speak very much english or spanish (which is all we can communicate in), so ended up selling us a ticket that did not actually exist. he said that he would just tell the bus driver to stop in san ignacio and let us off. i am still curious as to why we trusted him, but we did. to make a very long and tedious story a little shorter, let's just say that we had to tell the angry bus driver that we were sorry and that we would just go to wherever the bus was going. it happened to be going to flores. we were a little worried since we had no idea where we were or what flores even was, but it all worked out. flores it is similar to a little european city with cobblestone streets and colorful buildings. when we arrived it was sprinkling rain--the city was amazing. it is a fairly quiet city, and is an island located on lago (lake) petén itza. people make their living fishing, owning shops or hotels, or owning water taxis or tuk-tuks (scooter taxis) to transport people on and off of the island. we loved how cheap everything was. hotels cost about $13-$20 a night.





one of my goals for the trip was to buy a nativity set. i ended up purchasing two nativity set while i was there-one is in traditional mayan clothing. it is beautiful. i loved the atmosphere and speaking to the people. searching every single shop for the nativity sets allowed us to speak to many of the natives that we other wise would have not talked to. cameron even picked up a few spanish words and phrases while we were there. i also bought a scarf and cameron bought a knife from a young boy.

one day we went across the island in a water taxi. we saw a city called san marcos across the lake and wanted to check it out. it looked really beautiful and were excited to see what was in store. we told our water taxi driver that we would be about 3 hours, so to pick us back up around 4. when we got to san marcos, we about went into shock! although it looked like a fun, busy little island, it ended up being a little residential villiage. we thought we were going to be able to shop, but there were only homes. a few families sold sodas, vegetables, fruits, and random items out of their home. the only thing on the island was a church and homes. we walked all over the island since we had to kill 3 hours. it was fun to talk to the people. i could tell that some of them had never seen a white person before. a lot of them wondered what we were doing there! it definitely was not a normal tourist spot! it was fun to go on the water taxi and see san marcos, but we were definitely glad to go back to flores!





the reason we chose to leave belize in the first place was to visit tikal. at one time, tikal was the largest mayan city in the world. the ancient maya began building tikal around 550 b.c., and since then it has always been an important religious center. we had the opportunity to see some sort of ancient mayan ritual be performed by a modern mayan leader. the maya are allowed to still worship at tikal. the largest number of mayan ruins is found at tikal. the main civic and religious center of the city covers about 500 acres. apparently only 30% of the ruins have been excavated--the other 70% is still under ground. tikal is really neat because it is surrounded by the jungle. cameron loved it, because he has always wanted to go to a jungle. we saw lots of neat animals, including this cute monkey.














we ate a lot of neat meals in flores as well. we ate a rare pescado blanco, which is a white fish that is only found in the lake. we also ate guatemalan sirloin steak (which, if you have ever seen what cows in guatemala look like, you would understand that they really are not very tasty). one of my favorite things to do was eat ice cream! there is nothing like mexican/guatemalan ice cream!






it was fairly hot, which will hopefully explain why i look like a homeless citizen in every single picture. but flores is amazing! hopefully we will get to visit again!