Guatemala in small blocks

Flores: Our first stop, Flores is a small town on a small island inside a small lake. The streets are lined with tourist-catering businesses and restaurants, walls are plastered with advertisements for tours to Tikal, shuttle buses to anywhere in Guatemala, and cheap phone calls to the US and Europe. There is nowhere to buy vegetables except for a tiny, dusty store that has some sorry-looking tomatoes and a few bananas in wooden crates. For accomodations, because both cost 25 quetzales, we decide to go for the cheap hotel with a balcony over either of the backpacker hostals, though we do end up swinging by one of those for their 5 quetzal snack happy hour. Tiny 3-wheeled taxis zoom up and down the small main street, a bridge leads to Santa Elena but we never walk across it, our hotel attendant speaks in loud, high-pitched, slow Spanish and asks if we are from Spain or France. Only the ruins of Tikal keep us in this town for 2 nights.

Livingston: Second stop. This town is only reachable by boat, either a half hour by motor boat or and hour and a half by ferry. We take the ferry, grab some yucca as we wait for the boat to load and lurch across the water, and ride down the Rio Dulce just as sun sets. It's beautiful and to be near water again is as sweet as the cool breeze coming off of it. Livingston is a small fishing town composed of 4 different cultures, a tiny museum, a strip of touristy restaurants and hotels, and acres of jungle and communities that lead to the Caribbean Sea. We spent our time avoiding the "backpacker hostal" atmosphere of where we were staying (we just couldn't beat the 15 quetzal hammocks), eating fish and chocobananas, and staying out of the rain on those days when it just wouldn't stop coming down. Everyone is in the streets at night in Livingston, minus the tourists who are in bars or restaurants for most of the dark hours, and in some parts of the town where there isn't electricity, you can actually see the stars. The town is laidback, nothing really in the way of entertainment except for heaping bowls of tapado (fish, shrimp, coconut, banana soup) and the "cultural center," located behind the basketball court, that consists of a couple of crocodiles, a couple alligators and a few turtles in cement enclosures. Though one night we did get to see some Garifuna drumming and dancing while sipping on some Gallos. We spent an extra night here, hoping for the sun to show itself again. It did and we spent the day hiking for a few hours through much of Livingston, across a river, down the beach next to the Caribbean Sea, and through the forest until we reached Los 7 Altares, a series of waterfalls and pools. We climbed over stones and through thick, black mud until we got to a deeper pool where we jumped off the waterfall into green, deep, calm water.

We left Livingston on a hellish boat ride, which was supposed to be a pleasant trip down the Rio Dulce with some stops for walking or swimming. Instead, we had an hour's worth of cold rain whipping us in the face and running down our plastic protection onto our necks and legs.