Feb, 20th 2019
Today we left Belize and crossed the boarder to Guatemala. This was the first time we had ever walked across a boarder. We took a cab from San Ignacio to the boarder (about a 15 min ride) where we paid a $20 USD exit fee per person to leave Belize.
At the boarder there were guys who would exchange your money from Belize dollars to Guatemalan quetzals. After going through immigration and getting our passports stamped we were planning to take a “chicken bus” to the town of Flores. However, a convincing taxi cab driver gave us a price we thought was a fair deal to drive us. We were traveling with our new friend Brendan #2 so we were able to split the cab 4 ways. We had a nice 1.5 hour long drive and got to see a little bit of the countryside. We didn’t have any reservations for a place to stay so we followed Brendan #2 to his hostel and decided to get bunks there. This was the first time I had ever been in a triple bunk bed!
We signed up for the sunrise Tikal tour that left our hostel at 3am. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the town and going for dinner. Flores is on a big lake and a very cute little town.
This part of Guatemala seemed much more developed than the towns in Belize we had been to. The roads here are mostly paved and they have shopping centers and fast food which we never saw in Belize. What we also noticed right away is that hardly anyone speaks English. We immediately realized we were not as capable in speaking Spanish as we thought, and getting around was a bit more difficult. Luckily Brendan #2 spoke Spanish and that was really helpful when we were out and about.
After a somewhat late dinner we hit the bunks as we only had a few hours to sleep before sunrise at Tikal.
