Flowers

Thu, 20 Feb - Sat, 22 Feb

I arrived in Flores at noon and immediately asked at the hostel where the best place to swim is. It's really hot here, especially when you're carrying 2 backpacks for more than half an hour. I took a boat and walked to the Chechenal Beach on the other side of Lake Petén Itzá. There I met Cesar, and in the late afternoon, he showed me a viewpoint, a few howler monkeys, the Iguana Island, and took me back to Flores on his boat.

On Friday, we met in the morning and went to a bathing area with a Tarzan rope, where you can swing into the lake. My first attempt was not quite elegant, but shortly after, I got much better and even jumped from a 5-meter high diving board. After that, we drove to another coast of the lake and visited the local zoo, but in the afternoon sun, all the animals were very tired. In the evening, I booked a tour for the next day to the Yaxha ruins.

On Saturday, I met Cesar at 8 am and we walked about 40 minutes to Actun Kan Cave (Cave of the Snake in the Mayan language). The entire tour is nearly 1,200 meters long and leads under the lake to the neighboring village of San Benito. We only did the short tour, and there were rock formations with interesting names. In the afternoon, I took a guided tour to the Yaxha Mayan ruins, about 2 hours away from Flores. Here, too, there were several temples and palaces, a ball court, altars, and statues to see, and our guide Wilson explained a lot to us about the Mayan civilization. There were monkeys and parrots again, and luckily, we also saw a gray fox and a toucan. Wilson also made the 5-day hike to the largest Mayan site, La Danta, sound very appealing, and I decided to do this tour starting the next day. In the late afternoon, we watched the sunset from a temple and drove back to Flores. I'm getting a little nervous about the hike!