Lake Izabal and Guatemala City

After Tikal we drove into Flores to find a church and while we waited for the next meeting to start, we found a little park on the Lake Peten Itza and took a leisurely Sunday afternoon nap.  It was a nice way to start the next leg of our trip.  The drive to Lake Izabal was on nice paved highways.  There weren’t even that many tumulos, which have become increasingly common in Northern Guatemala. (A tumulo is a Guatemalan version of a tope). 

Seeing as our trip to Lake Izabal was more of an after thought, we hadn’t done much research about camping accommodations.  We also were going to be rolling in late at night, so we decided to stick with a “Rough Guides - Central America on a Budget” recommendation.  They recommended a little town on the western end of the lake called El Estor.  El Estor got it's name from English pirates who would come up the Rio Dulce to get supplies at the one store found on the lake.  Get it? El Estor = The Store.  WE found that hilarious and decided it was a good enough reason to stay there.  We ended up at a place called Hotel Ecologico Cabañas del Lago.  For $25 bucks we had a room with A/C, a private bath, unrestricted use of the restaurant’s kitchen for cooking our meals and lake access.  The owner also whipped up a fresh batch of Jamaica juice for us when we arrived.  The place was clean and the owners were very accommodating.

"The Store"

In the morning the owners arranged for us to hop on a boat and head into Parque Natural Bocas Del Polochic.  Apparently there is a bunch of wildlife, although we didn’t see much of it due to a late start.  I suppose we can blame that on me being back to normal and not being able to pry myself out of bed at 6AM.  Our boat guide wanted very badly to show us something awesome so our 2 hour tour turned into a 3-4 hour tour.  By the end of it, we were grateful for all of his efforts, but we were ready to head back in.  We did see lots of interesting birds, bubbles in the water that were supposedly from manatees, and a few howler monkeys.  What was most impressive was how many monkeys we heard. It was at least as many as he heard at Tikal, maybe more.  And this time they were much closer. 

This is a video of us waiting for a manatee.  Look for the bubbles.  Get ready for some excitement.

When we returned, we grabbed some fried chicken from the local Pollo Campero and headed out to find the hot springs waterfalls.  I first heard about them when I was standing in line at the customs office on the Mexican Guatemalan border.  I was chatting with some older ladies and they gave me a whole list of things to do.  That has been pretty common here.  We get tips on what to see and what to do from people everywhere.  I had kinda forgotten about the hot springs waterfall until we decided to go check out Lake Izabal the day before. 

You’ve probably already figured out that the hot springs waterfall is a hot-water waterfall but what's interesting is that it falls into a very cold river, making the water below very comfortable.  Naturally then, the river a popular place to bathe and do laundry.  Luckily all of that was happening down stream quite a ways, so our time at the waterfall was naked-old-lady-free.  There were, however, a gaggle of kids from 10-12 years old, scaling the rock face and jumping off the waterfall.  Brett couldn’t let a bunch of kids show him up.  And naturally, I couldn’t let my little brother show me up, nor could Kaytie let her husband show her up.  Peer pressure at it’s finest.  Everyone survived and we all had a great time.  One of the kids even took us into a cave behind the waterfall.  We love that local hospitality!

After the waterfall we hit the road.  (But not before a quick bath in the river.)  We really had no plans, other than crossing Guatemala’s largest bridge before dark.  We were pushing it on time so we rushed our baths and got moving.  We barely made it to the bridge before dark.  I’m pretty sure I’ve been on bigger overpasses.  We were a little disappointed with that one.  We didn't even take a picture.  I guess we need to hold off on our engineering-tourism ‘til we get to Panama.

With that checked off the list, we really had no plans.  We needed to be in Guatemala city by the next night so we could catch our flights back to the States (we took a little weekend vacation from our travels to be at the wedding of Kaytie’s brother).  But also, we have a friend, Sara Galvez, from our time in Hawaii who lives in Guatemala City and she offered to show us around.  We decided to push on for a few hours before bed to give us more time for site seeing the next day.  After a while, we stopped in a town for dinner, some Sarita ice cream, and to find a place to sleep.  We were all hotel’d out, so we first looked for parks and came up empty.  Then we went to find a police station because we’ve heard sometimes they’ll let you park in their lot if you a$k nicely.  Then we found out that the nearest police station was about 15 minutes back the way we came about.  That was unacceptable seeing as I cannot back track.  Finally we drove past a nice looking restaurant that was just closing up.  It was steak house type place and they had a wall surrounding the parking lot with an open barn complete with hay bales.  We pulled in and asked the first person we saw if we could park there for the night.  Turns out it was the owners wife and she had no problem with it.  She had one of the waitresses show us the bathrooms and had her husband show us where to park in their barn.  Total cost: $0.00 Although we did spend more money on breakfast in their restaurant than we typically would have.  But it was worth it… Delicious!

The next morning after breakfast we hit the road to Guatemala City and arrived there early in the afternoon.  Along the way we pulled into a car wash.  Sara also offered to let us park the Montero in her garage while we were gone, and I felt like it should probably have less than 12 layers of caked-on mud.  It was actually quite sad.  We had earned that mud together over weeks of travelling and miles and miles of crazy roads.  And in 20 minutes, two dudes with a pressure washer erased it all.

Sara met us at the Guatemala City LDS Temple, right by her house.  Before we saw the sights, we drove over to her place, tucked the Montero in, did some laundry and had lunch.  After even just a month on the road, it felt incredibly cleansing to have a place where we could pull everything out of the Montero, clean and organize it, and put it back in its designated spot.  Thanks Sara!   

That night we headed downtown to the Presidential Palace.  (The President doesn’t actually live there.  He lives around the corner from Sara.)  In the square out front, there were hundreds of people gathered to watch the Guatemala vs. USA futbol match.  We walked down an outdoor mall that would have seemed perfectly in place in any major US city.  There was a street comedic team performing to a huge crowd.  I understood about 90% of what they said and got about 10% of the jokes.  Languages are hard.  For dinner, we headed to another nice part of town and ate at my new favorite restaurant, Saul.  If you are ever in Guatemala, check it out.  It’s wonderful.  The menu had some great typical Guatemalan dishes but it had western food as well.  The Crepes were delicious, the smoothies blew our minds. 

We came to know an entirely different Guatemala.  This area of the city is super nice.  Honestly, it was kind of refreshing.  It was just what we needed before our travel marathon to Mexico City to Las Vegas, then by shuttle to St. George, UT, then by Kaytie’s sister’s minivan to Ogden, UT.