My flight to the jungle ruins of Tikal, landed in the closest city which is Flores, Guatemala. It was a big plane that was only half full, and the flight only took half an hour, so short we weren’t even offered a Coke. The minute I stepped out of the plane, I was hit with suffocating humidity and heat. At the airport we were serenaded by a marimba band playing in the terminal. There was a mini-bus waiting there that drove us to the Hotel San Juan.
The room I got was quite nice room and had a feature I had never seen anywhere in a hotel room before. Inside the shower stall there was what appeared to be an electric circuit breaker switch. Yikes! Seeing a component of the electrical system inside a shower stall was extremely scary, and I really never did figure out why it was there. Surely anyone with any knowledge of electricity knows that electricity and water don’t mix.
The city of Flores is a bit schizophrenic. The old original city was located on an island in Lake Peten Itza, the city has since expanded onto the shore across from the island and the two parts are connected by a causeway. Once I got settled in my room, I walked across the causeway to old Flores, did a quick exploration around the original city, then trekked back across the causeway, stopping to snap a couple of photos of the sun setting across the lake.
I stopped at a restaurant, ordering what I thought was some sort of tortilla, but when the meal was delivered, I discovered that my poor Spanish had really ordered fried potatoes, in an egg kind of thing. That was not a problem however, because it was very tasty.
It is really hot here. I mentioned that before, but it deserves another mention. Even though it is evening, and all I am doing is laying on the bed, the sweat is pouring off of me. Even while walking on the causeway with the wind blowing, you could feel the sticky humidity in the heat.
Talk about your global village; in my hotel room in the middle of the Guatemalan jungle, there is a TV set. I turned it on expecting to watch some Guatemalan-made programing, but guess what is on: No, you are wrong, it was the Disney Channel. Incredible. We don’t even have that in McBride.
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