Jungle, ruins, rivers and an island on a lake - our first two weeks in beautiful Guatemala

After a lovely week relaxing in Belize, we had an uneventful border crossing into Guatemala and onto our first destination: Flores.

Flores:

Flores is a town in Northen Guatemala, which sits on an island on Lake Peten Itzá (these days connected by a causeway to the mainland). It’s a lovely place with cobbled streets and colourful houses, and is surrounded by water. In fact, there had been some flooding in the town which meant some streets were cut off by the water levels. 

We spent a few days here enjoying wandering the streets, watching sunsets over the lake, and experiencing the local Christmas festivities. 

From the 7th December onwards, the Guatemalan people start celebrating Christmas with daily rituals and events. On the 7th December they have the burning of the devil, lighting big bonfires on every street. We also happened across a street festival one night, with lots of street food, drinks and festivities! 

Whilst we stayed in Flores, we made a visit to Tikal, one of the largest Mayan citadel ruins in Central America. Tikal is a huge archaeological site, sitting in the middle of untouched jungle, and it has the most excavated ruins of any site we’ve visited. We spent four hours exploring the ancient temples and palaces, walking between them through the jungle, and climbing the tallest pyramids to enjoy the views. Though we enjoyed visiting Tikal, we had also visited lots of ruins in Mexico, and felt we didn’t learn much more about the Mayans and their history at Tikal than we had in the other sites we had visited. 

Lanquin:

After a few days in Flores, we took a long bus ride deep into the moutains of Eastern Guatemala to a small village called Lanquin. A highlight of the bus ride for Ash was a comfort break at McDonalds in Coban (the first McDonalds he has had on our trip!). We stayed in a wooden hut in a lovely hostel in Lanquin - it had a pool, beautiful views of rhe moutains, and was very tranquil. We spent a whole day at the hostel swimming in the pool, reading, relaxing and enjoying the views - it was pure bliss!

The main reason for going to Lanquin was to visit Semuc Champney - a naturally formed limestone bridge, under which passes the Cahabon river. On top of the limestone bridge sits a series of stepped limestone pools filled with turquoise water. To reach Semuc Champney, we had a 40 minute ride on a steep dirt track through the moutains, stood on the back of a pick up (mostly trying not to fall over!). Once there, we enjoyed swimming in the beautiful pools, and trying not to get too close to the edge as apparently you can slip and fall into the river below! We also hiked to the top of the nearest mountain to the viewpoint.

Overall, we both enjoyed our first few weeks in Guatemala. The people here are very friendly, and everyone stops to say hello and talk to you. We also found the pace of life slower and more relaxed than Mexico, and there is a calmer vibe here. Though we enjoyed visiting Semuc Champney, Ash felt that it was a bit overrated and not as spectacular as he had hoped. 

We had planned to visit the Rio Dulce next, and stay in a hostel on the river further east of Semuc Champney, but there are no roads in that region and to get there would take a long time and cost a lot of money (we would have to hire a 4x4 to take us there!), so we decided not to do this and instead head straight to our next destination: Antigua.