Tag Archives: guatemala

Belize

Day 3 – Food

2 Comments

Apparently I failed badly at photographing food this day :). This plus side is, that the food failed pretty badly as well.

We had breakfast at some place 2 blocks from our hotel. If someone remembers the name, you’re welcome to write it in the comments for me. Food was mediocre and slow. I think I had eggs and toast or something.

Lunch was worse. We’d just finished off a long walk through Tikal and everyone was pretty hungry. Rather than drive for a bit, we decided to have some lunch at the restaurant at the site. It’s open-air, nice tiles, not a bad looking place. The menu was in Spanish however, which caused some issues. Sean and I ordered burgers – they were alright. I think others ordered “plain rice”, “plain fries”, “plain tortilla”, etc. Really lackluster food. Worse, it was relatively expensive compared to other food in the area. Just avoid the on-site restaurant.

Here’s a photo of some beer and a water bottle instead :P.

Dinner, on the other hand, was easily in my top 2 meals of the trip – it could even be number one, but I have a special place in my heart for ribs (they are several days away now).

So Sean and I got fairly drunk at this restaurant. We finished our game of Agricola and pushed our table over to the girls table. They had already ordered while were finishing, so their food arrived well before ours.

I feel a little sorry for Dayl – Sean and I were looming over her meal the entire time because it looked sooo good. We both ended up ordering the same thing. It was a grouper caught that morning, cooked in what was probably a cajun sauce. The entire fish. Head to tail (entrails removed). Pull the spine out yourself when you finish with the top layer. Potatoes with garlic butter. A little salad, a cucumber, tomatoes.

But the fish, was absolutely amazing. Again, if I could remember the name of the restaurant, I’d be highly recommending it _right now_.

Belize

Day 3 – Flores

Leave a comment

We drove back from Tikal and had a night of not doing much. The girls wanted to go shopping (I kinda wanted to go shopping to…:P) and Sean and I wanted to find a place to drink and play Agricola.

Flores with a sunset. I can’t remember if I used the digital zoom on this or not. >.<

Sean had used TripAdvisor to find the name of the #1 ranked restaurant on the island and we had a mission to find it. I hopped into an internet cafe and wrote some e-mails, sent that post card that I’d picked up (did it arrive yet? :)) and then we asked for directions to Cafe Arqueologico Yaxha.

We never found it. But we did find a great sunset, some basketball courts and, about 45 minutes of walking later, a restaurant that looked ok that was exactly one building further than the place we’d eaten breakfast at. We looked at the drink specials menu, did a little quick math and determined that Cuba Libres (rum+coke+lime) were about $1.20US, and walked in. Sean asked if we could play a game and the German waiter said go ahead.

We had a couple drinks. By a couple, I mean a few. By …a few, I mean several. I mean Sean at Agricola last night – one of my 2 (3?) wins this vacation. 😛

The girls showed up part-way through our second game and were slightly embarrassed to be seated with us. 😛 We finished our game and pushed our tables together and proceeded to be drunk with them.

Dinner was pretty amazing. This was either my top meal of the trip or second meal, I can’t decide between the fish here or the ribs on San Pedro. Can anyone reading remember the name of this restaurant? It would be nice if I had that written down :).

One last photo of Flores, Guatemala. The entire island looked like this.

Next stop – day 3 food! (although I appear to have forgotten to take a photo of breakfast…meh…it sucked anyway).

Belize

Day 2 – Tikal

4 Comments

We woke up in the morning and had some breakfast at a place that served it to slow, and wasn’t very good. Had a short walk around to take in the sights – Flores is a neat little place, as I’ve mentioned before. Here’s a photo of the seawall and the view from one of the edges.

We drove to Tikal – probably about a half hour drive. We stopped at the gate and were immediately greeted by a tour guide. Minutes later we had negotiated a price for a tour for the day (“$10US per person, but you can negotiate”…so weird that they add that last bit), and Luis (Lewis?) was our guy.

At one point he points into the jungle a bit and says “this is my favourite part”. I immediately think we’re going to die, but we follow him in about 5 meters to a little clearing. He points at some vines and explains, in slightly broken English, that people like to sit on them and take photos. We did so :). The vines looked pretty sturdy, so I got a little fancy :).

I’ve only been to pyramidal ruins once before, and that was somewhere in Mexico. There you climbed up the pyramid steps – here you climb up specifically built wooden stairs. We climbed a lot of stairs on this day.

The view from the first pyramid.

Sean stands on the edge, scaring the girls into thinking he’s going to fall over. In reality, the edge isn’t really an edge…it’s a slope with a shelf of dirt below it. If he fell, he wouldn’t enjoy it, but he probably wouldn’t die :).

This next one was the most brutal climb. Sean says that the last time he was in Tikal he didn’t climb this one, but was determined to do it this time. The stairs shook when you climbed it, and they were all but vertical.

Luis was a really cool guy. I got the feeling that he was really into his job – he got excited one moment when we saw a white-tailed deer and he said that he had been looking to see one for several months now. He was knowledgeable about the area and the wildlife, and was able to answer most of the questions we answered, even if his English wasn’t perfect. Our cave tubing guy was a salesman – Luis seemed more like a nature lover taking some folks for a walk.

At the end, he asked us all if we had had a nice time in Guatemala and we had to say that we had so far. He seemed pleased and asked us to tell our friends about it, that it’s safe and friendly and all that stuff. I don’t pay much attention to world issues, so I’m afraid I’m completely unaware of what point-of-view he was trying to overcome, but I was impressed by his earnestness and so I feel it’s appropriate to give a glowing review of the day.

Afterward we were all hungry, so we walked over to the little cafe/restaurant attached to the park. Wherein we had the worst meal of the trip. You’ll have to wait for the description, since the meal photos go with it :). But here’s a photo of Sean and Kerry waiting for their food, not realizing yet that they won’t enjoy it when it arrives. “Gallo” is the name of the national Guatemalan beer and this was the first and last time I had one.

I bought a postcard and mailed it to Cin that evening. Because her home address is the only one that I have memorized :P. I don’t even know if she’s gotten it yet…

I’m away for the weekend, so this is the last post you’ll see for a couple days. I’ll be back Sunday, so hopefully I’ll get one or two in there – there are at least 2 more in day 2.

Thanks for reading! And thanks everyone who has written to say they are enjoying my posts – it’s nice to have the feedback :).

Belize

Day 2 – La Casa De Mayos

Leave a comment

We stayed at a place called La Casa De Mayos. The front desk staff didn’t speak english. Whee! Apparently there was some booking issues with not having enough rooms written down as we’d asked for, but it worked out somehow. $20US a night, an extra $4US/night for AC – well worth it. Hot place.

A cute little place. We went for a walk around Flores after we settled in. Nice little island – beautifully pristine seawall, small one-way cobblestone roads, buildings built close together.

After a long day of sitting in the sun and swimming, we passed out pretty quick.

Tomorrow…Tikal!

Belize

Day 2 – Daytime

Leave a comment

We left the 5 Sisters lodge just before noon and drove down the long dirt road towards Santa Elena/San Ignacio. These two cities are literally separated only by a river and two bridges – both of which are one-way.

We stopped in San Ignacio briefly. Walked out into the blazing sun and found a place to get some lunch. Found a bathroom as well and paid an entire BZ$ (about 50 cents) to use it. Looked for iced cream, but no one was impressed by the available fare and so we hopped back into the car and traveled on.

Our destination for the afternoon was Flores, Guatemala. We had a planned “nothing day”, where in we were going to travel, check into our hotel and then check out the very local sites for the rest of the evening and afternoon.

We arrived at the Belize/Guatemalan border and opened our window to a gentleman wearing a laminated lanyard. He informed us that the border was closed because of bridge work on the other side. He said some other things as well, which caused our party leaders to believe that he was lying, but I can’t quite remember all of it. They went inside and got the full story – 12-7 every day the bridge was closed. It was about 3:30pm, so we had some time to wait around.

Waiting by the border…

Our first plan was to go to a local tourist spot.

This is a hand-drawn raft that takes about 30 seconds to cross the river. Sean looks pleased that the truck hasn’t sunk into the river yet :P. Unfortunately the place closed at 4:30pm, and we were there at 4pm. We traveled across anyway, hoping to find something to distract us, or maybe to get a discounted rate for the last half hour. No luck, so we wandered around the forest for a few minutes before taking the ferry back. Lots of “native artisans” on the other side of the dock, something I remember from Mexico but hadn’t seen around Belize yet.

We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting by a local river. Some folks read, some pulled out their DS (it wasn’t me!) others went swimming.

Really sweet place to hang out for an afternoon.

Got dry and dressed and went for dinner. Found a local place, had a great little meal, the girls got ice cream and we took off just before 7pm so we could make our bridge opening.

Unlike the Canadian/US border, where both countries trust each other…in Belize/Guatemala border you have to talk to both countries border control to get through. Belize was a-ok, no problem. Guatemala was slightly harder. English is not an official language, so that presented an issue. And the rented car apparently had some quirks.

I think the story was that there was a fee for the car to enter, which had to be paid and deposited to the bank immediately? The bank was closed, sooo….no car. But if you paid this guy, he’d give you a sticker for the car and take your money to the bank in the morning…which sounds pretty sketchy. Buuut…we had little choice if we were going to enter the country, so that’s what we did.

There’s also a fee to get some sort of spray for the car before entering. Costs $3. Probably as sketchy as it sounds :P.

Lastly we needed Guatemalan money – they don’t take US or Belizean dollars in Guatemala. Sean and/or Kerry had the forethought to ask at the 5 Sisters what a good rate was for buying money. That happened without a hitch – lots of people waiting around the border to sell money to you.

It also turns out that the border closes at 8pm. So we had exactly an hour to make this all happen. We were told this just as we had finished all of the necessities and were sitting in the car thanking our stars we’d made it. Dude taps on the window and suggests that since we have only 5 minutes before the border closes, we might want to hoof it :).

We drove for a long while after that. Came into another town called Santa Elena and then on the island of Flores. Which we’ll talk about later 🙂