El Remate and Tikal

We’ve changed our plans quite a bit on this journey, and making a trip to Tikal was definitely not in our plans. We heard from so many other travellers that Tikal was not to be missed, so we decided to take the long journey up to Flores to see what we were missing. 

We stayed in a beautiful place called El Remate, right on the edge of Lake Itza and the jungle and again, we were treated to the sounds of howler monkeys from our hotel (Apparently, the howler monkey noise  was used for the brachiosaurus noise in Jurassic Park, a very eery sound!). The lake was beautifully clear, and fine to swim in despite the many crocodiles! I can’t say we felt comfortable swimming but bearing in mind the locals collected their water and washed in the lake everyday, we felt it safe for a quick toe dip but I swear I saw a croc! El Remate was one of the nicest places we have stayed, with a tranquil and community feel about it and we’re all feeling very at ease in Guatemala so far. The people could not be friendlier and welcoming, and are always happy to engage in our attempts at Spanish (we are actually getting much better). 

Just a short bus ride away was the Mayan ruin of Tikal which is situated deep in the jungle. The place is incredible, and despite being a major tourist attraction, you could think you were there by yourselves (or maybe our noisy children clear spaces pretty darn quickly!). It is difficult to describe the feel of this place, but all I can say is that we had an incredible day surrounded by 2500 year-old gigantic ruins, many that you could climb to the top of, overlooking a vast expanse of dense jungle filled with the sound of howler monkeys all around you. We all agreed that this was one of our best days so far. 

We also spent an afternoon in Flores, a tiny little island in the middle of the lake. We did a little shopping, played a bit of chess in one of the many funky restaurants and mostly had a good laugh at Johnny after he had a run-in with Edward Scissorhands in the local barbers 😂. We were literally belly-laughing at ‘Dad’ whilst watching the man’s attempt at a haircut, and he now has a rather patchy grade 3 all over! 

After saying we would never do a night bus again, we are now on a 10 hour night bus to Antigua via Guatemala City 🤬. How those ‘race across the world’ competitors do that show I don’t know 😳.