sucka free!

We made a sharp turn on our journeys, deciding to get to Belize through Guatemala instead of crossing a lot of boring land in Mexico. We took a tour-bus-type thing from Palenque to the border town in Mexico called Frontera Corozal, where we took a boat down river to land on the other side in Bethel, Guatemala. There we met another bus that took us to the immigration station - a lone cement building surrounded by green fields and mountains. The bus was purely tourists from all over the world, most of whom asked us a lot of questions about the exchange rate from pesos to quetzales, where we reccomended staying... we had never even been to Guatemala before but we like to be informed.
We do our homework whenever going to new places, and did some reasearch on the border crossing into Guatemala. The country abolished border fees a few years ago to encourage tourism, but I read stories about people who had to pay up anyway. So we prepared our argument (and our Spanish) to head-butt the immigration officials. We were first in line at the office when our bus unloaded the uninformed tourists, and we had no plan to spread the word and get anyone upset.
We made friendly chat with the officer while he stamped our passports, then asked us for 40 quetzales. At first we asked for a receipt, having heard that this was enough to skirt the cost, but when he offered one up we told him we knew there was no fee, that we had spoken with our embassy, and that we were no mamones. At this point his Spanish became quieter and quicker and he told us that if we left our passports and came back last in line without telling anyone else that everything would be fine.
It seemed sketchy, but having already stamped everything there was nothing he could take back, and when we returned all was in order - and no illegal cost! How much farther we get speaking Spanish than the purely-English-speaking tourists (for many it´s still a second language, so that´s something).


From there we had more hours of bus time over long bumpy roads through beautiful green fields and mountains and big skies until we reached Flores, an island city in the middle of Lake Petén Itzá. The whole ride we were chatting it up with the tour guide and got useful information about where to stay in town (once again, first at the cheapest hotel, and scored the best room with a view of the lake!) and our bus trip from here to Belize City in a few days.

We came to Lago Petén Itzá to visit the ruins of Tikal, supposedly the most magnificent city in the Mayan world, if not Palenque. Today we are hanging around the lake, rented a kayak and worked up a little arm muscle.



During our last days in Chiapas, we took another day to explore the ruins of Palenque - such an interactive site where you can climb up most of the temples and wander through the maze of the main palace (fun, but also damaging to the structures to have hundreds of tourists a day clambering around). The whole place is in the jungle, with literally thousands of structures still unexcavated, poking out of lush hills and muddy earth; rivers snake throughout and there´s even a beautiful waterfall. We hired a guide to take us a mile into the jungle to find the Forgotten Temple, a journey we would have gotten lost on if we had tried to find it ourselves.

And finally, we took a trip to nearby Misol-Ha and Agua Azul. Misol-Ha is a really cool waterfall that you walk under and all over and there´s a little cave and whatnot... it´s kind of hard to describe but you can look up some pics of it online. Agua Azul is exactly that: blue water. Super blue, and so perfectly formed we felt like we were at a water park. There are gorgeous cascades that fall into dozens of different sized pools at different levels that you swim in and climb all over, it was a blast.


As soon as we came into Guatemala, we noticed differences from Mexico, and something new to get used to. All the fun Mexican slang we´ve become so accustomed to is out the window, and the Spanish they speak here is just a little different; the brands are all unrecognizable and we have a new menu of food to explore. The people are just as friendly and unhurried as anywhere else, and we´re having a great time so far.