Flores to El Estor to Livingston

We had a great few days in Flores. We took a lancha (boat) to a little town across the lake called San Miguel. We were trying to find a lookout and got a little lost but ended up stumbling on a achealogical excavation. Apparently these ruins were just discovered in 2008. The site was very tiny and they had just started excavating. We eventually found our way and made it to the lookout. A great view of Flores and Santa Elena. Then we headed to a little beach for a swim in the lake (it was so warm!). On the way back we got caught in a torrential downpour and were soaked to the bone. The sun was out by the time we made it back to our hotel.

We decided to head to El Estor on Dec. 15, which is a small town on the biggest lake in Guatemala, Lage de Izabal. The bus was supposed to pick us up in Flores at 9:30am but was 1.5 hours late as there was a big protest against the government in Santa Elena and the bus couldn´t get through. I guess everything was cleared up by the time we rode through cause we didn´t see anything. We had to change buses in Rio Dulce, which is mainly a transportation hub. The main street is crowded with vendors and the cars/buses can barely make it through. Lots of honking and yelling going on. After dodgy walk down a few blocks, we found the Microbus to El Estor. Microbuses are vans with enough seating for about 12 comfortably but usually they try to pack in at least 20 people, plus sacks of goods. Our bus got into a fender benber in one of the small alleys and we had to wait while the drivers sorted it out (no insurance here). Finally we made it to El Estor with an hour of daylight to spare. Eeesh!

El Estor was a great town, a lot bigger than we had expected. We stayed in Hotel Vista El Lago which is the oldest building in town. El Estor got it´s name because the English pirates used to make their way here to the store to restock. El Estor is the spanish twist on the english word "store" and the building we were staying in was the original store. Apparently Che Guevara stayed in this hotel back in the day, in the room next to us. Cool. The food was excellent and cheap. Nothing extravagant, the usual rice and beans with some sort of meat and tortillas. All the tortillas were made fresh. The ladies cooked over wood burning stoves and strained the corn, grinded it then hand slapped the tortillas into shape. So yummy! The vendor food was also excellent and we didn´t get sick. 2 of the 3 nights we were there, the town had major parties right in front of our hotel. Their christmas celebrations are more like raves for the whole family. Needless to say we didn´t get much sleep. But we did go on some pretty cool adventures.

The first morning we hired a guide to take us out in his boat to the bio reserve that´s at one end of the lake. We had to meet him at 6:30am, yawn. We saw tons of birds and monkeys and water lillies. Our guide paddled us through some dense jungle with overhanging vines and we saw a very rare hawk. The day after we caught a microbus to Finca El Paraiso, a hot spring waterfall. The falls pour into a cold river and mix together. The water from the falls was so hot and most of our pictures are blurry cause the lens kept fogging up. Then another Microbus ride took us to Boqueron Canyon, where we hired a young guy to paddle us in his dug out canoe up the river. The walls of the canyon were so high with tons of cool rock formations. Finally, we crammed into another mirobus back to El Estor and into the middle of a huge outdoor party. Ian was like a kid in a candy store cause there were tons of firecrackers for sale. From little mighty mights to giant bombs. Apprantly Central Americans celebrate christmas by blowing things up. Ian was in his element.

Yesterday (Dec. 18) we took another over packed Microbus (poor Ian didn´t even have a seat and there were guys sitting on the roof) back to Rio Dulce where we took a boat to the Caribbean coast to a town called Livingston. Livingston is charming eventhough it is a little rough. There are lots of Garifuna here ( the black people there were shipwrecked off the coast hundreds of years ago that mixed with natives, like in Belize) and there´s more of a reggae vibe than other parts of the country. We´re in a nice quiet hotel run by locals. We had a glorious sleep last night, no crazy music blaring. We will be taking a shuttle to Honduras either tomorrow or Monday. They need to get a certain number of people signed up before they can run the trip. We have to take a boat to Puerto Barrios in Guatemala and from there a Mircobus across the border and to La Ceiba, where we get the ferry to Utila, one of the Bay Islands.

We only spent 10 days in Guatemala and we loved all of them. We only saw a small fraction of the country but what we did see was beautiful. The people were nice and the food was good (better than expected anyways). We´d love to spend more time here but there´s more adventures to be had.