Kat & Marty

From the confines of a shared taxi to the Guatemalian border, we were greeted by a crowd of persistant touts. Eventually we decided to change a little money then took another taxi to a bus station 1km up the road. It was too blisteringly hot to walk. The bus station had no buses to Flores, an island on a lake next to the town of Saint Helena, but a mini van went past and took us on board. We shared around some caramel popcorn cakes we had bought that morning with some of the other locals on the van and everyone was really nice to us after that. It was a good feeling to ride along with the local people instead of riding an expensive tourist bus.

Flores was pretty and quite cheap to stay on. We had a large room with a bathroom for our dollars and a view over the lake. We booked straight onto a bus to go and spend the afternoon at Tikal - Mayan Ruins - and almost missed the bus as once again we got caught out by a time change crossing the border.

Tikal was the ultimate ruin experience. The ruins are set in lush, fertile jungle full of the roars of Howler monkeys and shrieks of Parrots and Toucans. The ruins themselves are enormous and some have been closed off as people have fallen to their deaths off the steep staircases. We raced around to see as much as we could before the park closed and the last bus for the night left back to Flores, but still managed to find time to sit on top of a pyramid and absorb the noisy jungle cacophony at sunset.

The next day contained a long, long bus trip across the strange sharp, hilly landscape of Guatemala to Antigua. This town is famous for it's beauty as it is set in the cradle of 3 volcanoes. We arrived late at night after an incident free bus changeover in Guatemala City, and not wanting to walk around the streets with our packs on, we took the first room we came to. It was dirty and over priced and had a huge bird cage full of illegal birds like toucans and different endangered birds all looking mangy and sorry for themselves. We walked into the traditional central park and found a reasonble restaurant to eat dinner in. Lights lit up the buildings and created a nice ambience. Most of the churches here are in ruins due to numerous earthquakes over the years but were still impressive none the less. In the morning we went into the center for breakfast and discovered a large carnival was taking place to celebrate a saints day. School children were everywhere, jumping on bouncy castles and playing mini sport games. We enjoyed watching the celebrations before buying a traditional, ceramic chocolate pot as a keepsake. Buying this pot was a really nice experience as the shopkeeper allowed us  look without pressurising us to buy everything we looked at like most people seem to.

We caught a chicken bus back to Guatemala city in order to get down to the Honduras border and ran into our first trouble. A rather scabby looking man was hanging all over Marty like a rash. In the extremely crowded bus he had some excuse as the conductor moved up and down the crowded aisle. At one point he got a bit too close and while amused at his weird antics I was trying to work out how to tell him to back off in Spanish, when Marty yanked his day pack away from him. He immediately jumped off the bus but he had slit a large hole in the back pack and had our rather empty wallet half out. It had got stuck so when he tried to get it out Marty saw the bag move and was able to stop him. We both felt shocked but had committed to a long day of different chicken buses which were now unavoidable. From that moment on we have been very much on our guard. There were some beautiful moments too. Someone came on the bus selling pastries. I asked a mother and her child what they were and the mother asked the little girl to let me taste hers. She immediately offered me a bite. It was so nice to have someone behave generously toward us as a lot of the time our interaction is with touts or people working in the hospitality trade.

The buses are second hand American school buses or sometimes a more direct minibus. The operators pack as many people in as they can before they will leave. On the other hand, if there aren't enough people to fill the seats the driver won't leave. We were in this situation on our last connection to the border and went from being in good time to get into Honduras while still light to sitting for ages in a town 30 minutes from the border waiting for the seats to fill. Finally we were able to leave but it was well and truly dark when we did get to El Forida for our crossing. One nice thing about this was that there was only one money changer left to harrass us and he ended up being quite helpful, even organising us a ride on to Copan Ruinas 10km away since the buses had stopped running for the day.