We left Livingston (Matt’s post to come) on the 9th of January for  Flores and unwittingly landed smack bang in the middle of the regions biggest festival -The Pilgrimage of the Black Christ.  In Guatemala, as with many other parts of the world including Ireland, Christian rituals are amalgamated with older local rituals creating a weird mash up of both traditions. The week long festival culminates on 15 January with numerous parades happening everyday. The first begins at 6am in the morning before people go to work. Each parade (including the 6am one) is accompanied with load music and young boys  walking ahead of the main group lighting fire crackers. Many of the parades didn’t have any religious symbolism from what I could see with men dressed up as women, or boys wearing a giant models of tall women or horses, dancing to marimba music. When I asked a local they said it was a celebration of the first women who went into the jungle (where the men would be working for weeks at a time) to cook and dance with the men.

At night time in the main square outside the Church both worlds seemed to be linked. Once mass was over, just as the people began to emerge from the church, a young man dressed as a bull with fire crackers and sky rockets attached to him would run through the crowd with the rockets going off in every direction. Young children would try and get as close as possible while we (and the many other shocked tourists) literate hid under tables and behind chairs as rockets flew past our head. They even hit the electricity lines causing it to  spark and set a silk banner hanging from the foyer of the Church on fire. This all just seemed to add to the excitement and as the  tourists hid and wondered what the hell was going on the locals clapped and cheered. Fire crackers are very cheap in Guatemala and appear to be central to all festivals. I’m told they are mostly produced in Guatemala city where whole families, even young children are involved in making them. Sometimes there are accidental fires with pretty devastating results.

Even without the excitement of the festival Flores is a  lovely place to visit.  Built up colonial style, the island is very picturesque and while it attracts a lot of tourists it doesn’t have the same staged feeling that Antigua can have. As with many other affluent places in Guatemala it is protected by armed police and the army has a check point half way across the bridge to the main land.  The island had many of the luxuries we had missed in Livingston including the first modern mall we had come across. While some may lament this it is also a positive sign of progress (even if only the very rich Guatemalans and tourists can afford this). Flores is the closest main town to Tikal and every second house is a restaurant or a hotel. As such the locals are relatively well off when compared to the rest of Guatemala and you see teenagers wearing braces, young boys on skate boards and girls in private school uniforms. Despite all this the town retains its charm and in the evening many locals and tourists a like gather on the wharf to jump into the warm clear water and watch the sun set.

While in Flores we did a three day trek from a small Mayan village of Cruce Dos Aguas, an hour from Flores, to the Mayan Ruins of El Zotz and then on to Tikal. It was a really enjoyable trip and while the ruins and the animal life were amazing it was also great to spend some time with some of the locals and properly get to know them. Christobell our guide was very knowledgeable and pointed out all the native plants and how the Mayans use them as various medicines. He was also amazingly able to tell from the sound a frog was making that it was being eaten alive by a snake. I know, I was fairly doubtful myself but we started looking along the path and the next thing we saw a quick rustle as the snake jumped back into the bush and the frog jumped into a near by puddle!

Victor was our amazing cook and walked the horses from camp to camp and Melque was our English translator. We had a great time with them in the evenings as we tried to navigate the language barrier.

Each night after roughly 5 hours walking we slept in Hammocks ingeniously covered with mosquito nets. Howler monkeys kept us awake on the first night and spider moneys woke us on the third morning by pooping on the make shift roof above us. We also saw prints of a Jaguar near to our camp on the second morning but unfortunately didn´t spot one.

El Zotz was the ruins we reached on the second day of the trek. El Zotz literally means the city of the bat and on the first evening, just as sun set we got to watch thousands of them emerge together from their cave. The sky went black there were so many. It was incredible as they silently flew around so, so close but never touching. The El Zotz site felt very authentic as you cannot get their by road so we were the only people their other than the care takers. The ruins are only partially excavated and are still very much covered in jungle. El Zotz is only a day and a half walking distance from Tikal and you can actually see Temple 4 from the top of the temples.

We reached Tikal on the third day and while the temples were spectacular, the number of tourists (after having the jungle to ourselves for three days) did take away from the site a little. We stayed for the sunset tour and got to experience a little more of the site as the rest of the tourists left. Just as we left the park we were inches from stepping on a snake we mistakenly took as a stick. Great way to finish the exciting three days!