Two On Tour

Wednesday 1 April

It’s April. We’re approaching the midway point of our travels in Latin America.

For breakfast, I have to walk across Panjachel clutching a voucher to a leafy, patio restaurant. It looks quite upmarket, but I’m soon disabused of this notion when I receive a bare bones tipico breakfast. The mashed red beans taste alright, but my body is quietly suggesting that I don’t finish them. I cautiously leave half.

The minivan to Guatemala City is full: 24 passengers, with suitcases secured on the roof. We labour out of Panajachel, inching up to the ridge, where we catch our final glimpse of Lake Atitlan far below. I’m feeling just a little under the weather, but think nothing of it. I bury myself in music and podcasts, and dig in for what could be anything up to a six-hour ride.

Somewhere near Antigua, we pull over for what I assume is a regular rest stop. The driver calls my name, and K and I are briskly transferred to a private car. It seems we’re the only passengers bound for Guatemala City; everyone else is heading to Antigua.

Our new driver reminds me of Dale from Tucker and Dale Versus Evil: menacingly large, but a gentle giant. He whisks us back to the city in forty-five minutes while the traffic heading out of town on the other side of the dual carriageway is mired in one almighty Easter holiday snarl up. He even offers to drop us at our hotel instead of the official drop point at the airport.

Back at Hotel Barceló, we’re greeted by the same receptionist as when we were here before in late February. She even remembers us. Sweet. It’s not until we’re in the room and I can relax that I realise just how under the weather I’m feeling. I curl up and sleep for three hours.

Eventually, I drag myself downstairs to eat, but soup is all I can manage. Back upstairs, I drift in and out of sleep, feeling rougher than I have in many years. Around midnight, everything comes to a head. Drenched in sweat and delirious, I stumble out of bed, unsure if I’m going to vomit or let it all out the other end. Outside the bathroom I faint, hitting my head on the doorway and scaring the life out of K, who rushes over. I come round, surprised to find I’m lying on the floor. I could have sworn I was in bed. Shortly afterwards comes the first of what will be more than a dozen dashes to the bathroom lasting all night and leaving me almost sleepless.

Those pesky mashed beans.

The only good things I can say about this: thank goodness we’re carrying rehydration salts. And thank goodness tomorrow is a rest day.

Thursday 2 April

After a sleepness night involving multiple dashes to the bathroom, I’m hardly going to feel in top shape today. I skip Hotel Barceló’s magnificent breakfast buffet, still feeling too rough to manage anything more than a small handful of my own supply of nuts.

We had plans to get out of the hotel today to visit a museum. As it turns out, Easter arrives early in these parts: Maundy Thursday is every bit a part of Easter as Good Friday. Everything we would have been interested to see in Guatemala City is closed. We wouldn’t have been doing much today even if I hadn’t fallen ill.

At lunchtime, I manage a small bowl of chicken soup and a glass of fresh lemonade. I’m 50% recovered. Otherwise, we while away the day in the hotel room catching up with admin. For dinner, we try Hotel Barceló’s Japanese restaurant. I’m concerned it will be well beyond our price range, but the promise of a bowl of ramen in miso soup is too tempting. It’s exactly what my body needs, and with me avoiding alcohol, it’s perfectly affordable.

By nine, I’m fast asleep. I’ll sleep right through to the morning without stirring.

Friday 3 April

After ten hours of sleep, my insides are back in working order. I delicately nibble on fresh fruit and yoghurt at the Barceló buffet — to no ill effect. There’s no good time to succumb to a stomach bug, but I picked the least worst day yesterday.

We have a late afternoon flight to Flores. That leaves time to finally venture beyond Hotel Barceló and do one thing in Guatemala City. With most possibilities closed for Easter, that one thing is a modest taxi ride to a mall to catch a rare glimpse of first-world Guatemala.

Malls are hardly my usual destination of choice. But my jaw drops when I see Oakland Place. Were it in Hong Kong, it would be the best-designed mall in town — yet here we are in scruffy, third‑world Guatemala City. To us, it’s mid-market: Zara and Colombia rather than LV and Gucci. But it must be well upmarket for most locals. Most shops are closed for Easter, but we can still enjoy a beautifully designed space, complete with hanging gardens, and quirky climbing frames and ball pits for kids. Muzak versions of Fields of Gold and Let it Be drift through the air. We stop for lunch in a semi-outdoor food court, where artificial oranges made from painted foam balls hang from real trees. I’m not going to knock it. The entire place is a planet away from the Guatemala of Lake Atitlan. I’m so glad both exist.

Another surprise on the short taxi run to the airport: our driver speaks fluent English. It’s less than a ten-minute drive, so I have limited time to ask him about life in Guatemala City, and anyway he’s keen to pepper us with questions about Hong Kong.

This is our second look at La Aurora airport. For the major airport of a country of eighteen million people, it’s tiny. No duty-free emporiums, just a dozen small shops — most closed for Easter — selling handicrafts, plus a pharmacy. One café, two staff. Three sour-faced, lackadaisical, female police officers draw out their coffee orders while the assistant struggles to remain polite and chirpy. (Postscript: there were many more shops and cafés gate-side in the international departures wing, but we didn’t see these until we flew to Mexico.)

Our half-full plane takes off as sunset falls on Guatemala City. Forty-five minutes later we’re on the ground at spruce and tidy Flores airport, two hundred miles north. Twenty minutes later we’re in a minibus heading over the causeway to Isla de Flores.

It’s Good Friday and the island is thronged. Good for atmosphere, not for peace. Along the waterfront facing the mainland, a row of bars blast upbeat Latin pop. Our hotel, full tonight, is next to them.

It’s hot. We change into lighter clothes and set out in search of dinner. Away from the noisy main drag, the cobbled streets are quieter. Outside the church, the village square is largely given over to a basketball court, where kids kick a ball about as families and backpackers look on, eating from takeaway boxes.

Back at the waterfront, party boats depart with live rappers aboard. Ghastly. We’ll stick to dry land. In our room, the noise from the bars is loud but thankfully not overwhelming. Sleep arrives with podcasts playing on earbuds. K later tells me the bars closed at one in the morning. It could have been worse.

Saturday 4 April

I’m up early, keen for a stroll before steamy Flores heats up. I dawdle across the causeway and back, then around the island. By daylight, the effects of the current high water level in the lake are clear: the submerged mini park halfway across the causeway, the abandoned restaurant, and above all the submerged cobblestone coast road that once encircled the island. Until a few years ago, it must have made for a pleasant sunset promenade; now it lies ankle-deep underwater. The lake has no outlet, so water loss is only by evaporation. An unusually wet year can raise it enough to make an impact. Right now, at the end of the dry season, the lake won’t be any lower for the rest of the year:

After a quick dip in the hotel pool (I’ll need a hat to stay in longer than five minutes), we set out together to cover the same route I mapped out earlier. Lunch on the island. A few necessities from the supermarket over the causeway. It’s sweltering now. I’m glad I got out early this morning.

Dinner is by the flooded perimeter road at the lake edge. A nice spot despite unremarkable food. We’re six nights through a twelve-night stint of eating out every night — something I tired of around night three.

Sunday 5 April

Initially, I worry that we’ve booked into Flores for one day too long. But as we let the day unfold instead of trying to control it, we slip into a quiet rhythm.

We’re back in the hotel pool this morning — this time wearing hats under the unforgiving sunshine. We’re alone. It’s Easter Sunday. Everyone must have gone either to church or to Tikal. A bit of both, I suspect.

We wandered the entire island yesterday, so there’s little new to discover. Flores is little more than a tropical St Michael’s Mount, after all. After a lunch of crunchy artisan salad and a glass of kombucha, we head back to the hotel. I settle downstairs with iPad and headphones watching Mike Robinson’s latest YouTube video on the history of animation (very impressive), and catching up on admin. K, naturally, stays in the room, perched on the bed under the aircon

Dinner is a splendid grilled fish lakeside at Restaurante Big Fish. K goes for grilled octopus — also excellent. It’s been a small, quiet day. I’m glad we booked in for a third night.

Monday 6 April

A transit day, although the transit itself is short. We check out of the Ramada Hotel but make ourselves at home on a sofa in the lobby, killing time reading until lunch.

The other side of lunch, we’re driven to Flores airport, then transferred to Jungle Lodge’s 24-seat minivan. A phone calls confirms no more passengers, so it’s just us and the driver for the 40-mile run north to Tikal.

Surprisingly, the road into the far, empty north of Guatemala is one of the smoothest we’ve experienced since arriving. Once we round the south-east corner of Lake Petén Itzá and start heading towards Tikal, it’s largely empty.

Initial impressions of Jungle Lodge are mixed. The palm-thatched reception and restaurant are graceful and perfectly tropical. Small bungalows are scattered through the surrounding jungle. But until we walk into our room, it hasn’t occurred to me that our cheaper hostel wing means a shared bathroom. Of course it does — it’s a hostel. I’m not looking forward to fumbling my way to the loo in the pitch black of the jungle night with a phone torch.

We round out the afternoon by checking out the two other hotels nearby. Despite the shared bathroom, Jungle Lodge is clearly the pick of the three.

Back in the lobby, a late-eighties National Geographic documentary covers the various Mayan sites scattered across Guatemala, western Honduras and southern Mexico, providing some context for tomorrow. Dinner is a slightly white-tablecloth affair with junior wait staff holding trays as seniors transfer food and drink from tray to table. Then we amble off into the jungle to sleep. Big day tomorrow.

Tuesday 7 April

Morning. We’ll explore Tikal alone first. The air was cool and pleasant at breakfast, but by the time we’re issued our wristbands at the park entrance at nine-thirty, it’s already muggy.

Half an hour of jungle paths brings us to Tikal’s Gran Plaza. Two days after Easter, the holiday crowds have thinned and while it’s still busy, it’s not overwhelming. Most congregate at the temples, the skyscrapers of the Mayan world, accessed by wooden staircases that snake up to viewing platforms. Most visitors are on fixed-route tours, so it’s easy enough to find a quiet corner in the vast site to sit and contemplate. At the Plaza of the Seven Temples, we’re completely alone except for the birds. Magical.

After climbing Temple IV — the Empire State Building of Tikal — for the Star Wars view, we finish with a loop around the north side of the site. We’re initially swamped by dozens of teenagers in school uniform heading in the other direction, calling out greetings as they pass. Once they’re gone, it’s just us for a mile or more, stumbling on the occasional lonely ruin deep in the rainforest.

Afternoon. I’m already whacked by the time we join Jonathan, our guide for the sunset tour, in the Jungle Lodge lobby. It’s only three. Sunset is three hours away. We’ve already completed 12,000 steps. How will we last? Thankfully, we’re a dozen-strong group (mostly Europeans, oddly no Americans), so I won’t need to interact with our guide more than I want. (I was concerned it might be our own private tour.) Jonathan takes his time, paying equal attention to nature and ruins. The heat soon wears off, the previously grey sky turns cobalt blue, and with the low sun, colour returns.

We pass through parts of the site we didn’t see this morning, until we reach the Mundo Perdido pyramid. We were here earlier, but now the park is closed to all but the small number of us on sunset tours. We climb to the viewing platform at the top of the pyramid, only to find the sun still some distance from the horizon. Below us, the jungle extends in every direction.

As the sun dips, Jonathan requests silence to appreciate the jungle as it prepares for night. Everyone complies. For the next half hour, the only sounds are the screech of parakeets darting from tree to tree in search of a perch for the night and the ambient hiss of thousands of insects, which gradually builds as the sun nears the horizon. If this morning’s moment of quiet contemplation was magical, this is pure alchemy. Something stirs deep in the bones as the last glimmer of sun disappears and night falls.

By the time our group reconvenes at the foot of the pyramid, it’s already deep twilight. We pass back through the now-silent Gran Plaza with the final traces of light, then plunge into the forest for the trek back to Jungle Lodge. Beyond the reach of our torches, the jungle is pitch black. I’ve never known such absolute, impenetrable darkness.

I’ll be living off the memory dividends from today for a long time.

Wednesday 8 April

Two young women from yesterday’s sunset tour are the only other passengers in the minibus that whisks us back to Flores. They’re a lawyer and an insurance broker from leafy Kew, who flew to Guatemala via Boston and Miami. It sounds exhausting.

With Easter gone, Flores is noticeably quieter. We’ve booked a spacious triple room, where we spend the afternoon sorting photos and dealing with admin. For dinner, we’re back at the almost-deserted Restaurante Big Fish. We’re really just kicking our heels now until we fly to Mexico on Friday afternoon.

Thursday 9 April

A day spent kicking our heels. We check out of our Flores hotel at eleven, sink into the lobby sofa until lunchtime, then perfect the art of loitering by returning to the same sofa until our taxi arrives mid-afternoon.

At Flores airport, we while away another four hours until we finally get airborne well after sunset. We barely reach cruising altitude before descending into Guatemala City.

Back for a third time at the Barceló Hotel, we find ourselves back in Strikers sports bar for our final night in Guatemala. The staff remember us and greet us like old friends. I had no idea we were so memorable. Or indeed popular. They even strike our valedictory espresso martinis from the bill. (I suspect this is management’s way of smoothing over the mishap six weeks ago, when our driver was booked exactly one month after we needed him.)

It’s only when I save my boarding pass to my phone that I realise our flight to Mexico City is at 8.30am, not 4.00pm. We haven’t knowingly received an email from the airline, although back in February K did receive a mysterious voucher offering a steep discount on our next Volaris flight.

It’s already gone midnight. We’ll now be up in the middle of the night to return to the airport. It’s a rushed finale to our time in Guatemala, but at least we’ll have a leisurely day in Mexico City tomorrow to compensate.