Flores: ruins, rip offs and roosters

Lauri and I discovered that Flores was in fact a tiny little island in Lago de Peten Itza which was a nice surprise. Cobble stone streets and a view of the water and of course two Sarina’s (the ice cream chain we have come to love). After settling in, we then rounded up the Dutch boys and went to go check out where the fireworks were coming from. In the middle of the island we found a giant fake Christmas tree with a matching giant rooster on top where a star would usually be. The Guatemalan beer is Gallo (rooster) and was sponsoring the lighting of the Christmas, so they obviously put a rooster on top of the tree. We danced the night away to live, funny Guatemalan music as we drank the featured beer. La fiesta ended and Lauri and I said goodbye to the Dutch boys yet again. On the way home we found some street food, attempted to jump on the kids trampoline and then passed out around 2am.

At 4am we woke up to go to the Tikal ruins. Why at 4am? Because they claimed we would catch the sunset over the ruins but we watched that from the car, so we were a bit disappointed in the false advertising. However, we drunkenly stumbled around the ruins we some sort of way that made sense. After three hours of temples and information Lauri and I took a short nap in the plaza of the main temples then explored a bit.  Annoyed with the large amounts of tourists, we took advantage of the sound projection in the plaza followed by an obnoxious photo shoot in front of temple 3 then called it a day, as well as a goodbye to Guatemala, the next day we were off to Mexico.

The Guatemalan exit stop was quite the win in terms of backpacking. Lauri did a bunch of research on getting to Palenque, Mexico for the cheapest price and we realized that Guatemala loves to screw travelers. It said online that there was no exit fee at the border but they would try to charge us $5. Sure enough the immigration lady asked for $5 and when we asked for a receipt they starred at us defeated and responded with “safe travels” and a stamp in our passports. Lauri and I had two hours to kill till the next bus so we found a piece of tile to sit on and decided to paint our nails. Four little girls from age 5-8 sat next to us watching with curiosity. Earlier I had given them some stickers so we were already friends. Then one of them discovered big toe. My ugly and awesome travel companion and it was all downhill from there. Lauri and I let them play with our sunglasses and other things in our purse as we finished painting our nails then offered them same to las chicas. Probably the most adorable thing I have ever seen.

Within the next two hours we watched several tour groups get their exit stamp, pay the unnecessary “$5 exit fee” and lose at least $40 dollars in change Quetzals to paseos. We felt bad for not informing them of their naive tourist faults, but being that we had to hang out at the immigration office for a few hours, but didn’t want to make any enemies. You're pretty and all Guatemala, but I don't like your attitude. Let's see how Mexico treats us..