4.30am on Thursday we woke up to go on a boat tour of the nature reserve. Our guide arrived at 5.15am and had to go wake the hotel operator to come and unlock the gate to let us out. We walked through town to the dock and hopped aboard a small punt with two others and our guide took us on a trip for about an hour through mangrove swamps and canals and lagoons. It was quite pretty as the sun rose but we didn’t see much wildlife apart from cattle egrets and moor hens. I did catch a brief glimpse of a woodpecker which had a bright red head but it didn’t hang around long.


After the tour of the Mangrove swamp we headed to the hotel and back to bed for a couple of hours. Sarah hit the pool and I walked across to the beach to go for a swim. Quite a challenge to get over the sand as it was so hot that even the sand being flicked up by my thongs was burning my feet. Had a quick swim in the Pacific ocean which was refreshing and ran back to the hotel which then required a swim in the pool to cool off. Check out from the hotel was at 1pm and we had a wait until 4pm for the bus to take us to Antigua.
Transport to get out of Monterrico is fairly limited with no buses coming to the area. We didn’t want to go through the stuffing around we had with several minivans required to get back to Esquitla so the only option available was a once-a-day “shuttle” to take us all the way to Antigua. We had spent some time looking at options the previous day and despite some of the hotels claiming to have a 1pm and 3pm service, 4pm was all that there was.
We relaxed in the hammocks at the hotel for a couple of hours after booking out and went to the pickup point good and early as there was no way we wanted to miss out getting a seat on the bus.
The bus arrived on time and everyone piled on. After the roof was stacked with backpacks a few minutes later, we were heading out of town.

Finally leaving hell!

That’s right! Sounds like an idyllic seaside paradise doesn’t it. Even the photos look nice but they don’t capture the stifling heat and dust. The dog-poo and rubbish through the sand on the beach. The groups of dogs and pigs eating rubbish in the streets.

Our theme song for Monterrico was “Hotel California”, you can check out any time you want / but you can never leave…

Lets just say it fell far far far far short of our expectations and I would recommend visitors to Guatemala to not go there, and leave it at that!

[/rant]

Arrival in Antigua was early evening, too late to book a bus to Honduras to see the ruins at Copan. We checked in to the hotel we had stayed in previously in Antigua and went out for dinner.

Early next morning we did the round of travel agents and couldn’t find any shuttles going the 7 hour trip to Honduras that day. They usually leave at 4am so we were facing another night in Antigua and a ’wasted’ day. Time is getting a little short now to fit in all our plans as we are flying out of Mexico City on the 16th and have a fair bit of distance to cover.
We decided to scrap the side trip to Honduras as I would love to spend a week in Belize and do scuba diving so that will give us a few more days to play with. Having made the decision it was back to the travel agent to book a shuttle to Flores in northern Guatemala. They left daily at 4am and we were able to find one leaving 1pm.
After booking out of the hotel we had a coffee at the good old Bagel Barn and waited for the bus.
The agent had told me it was a 6 hour trip (Sarah thought he said 8) but in the end including the time it took to get Guatemala city it took 12! Was around 600km with lots of stops. It was a very long and tedious journey and as the day progressed into the night it became obvious we wouldn’t be arriving at 8-9pm as expected in time to find a hotel, but after midnight when all accommodation would be closed! On top of this, the old man sitting next to me was saying how dangerous the town was where we would be dropped off and we should get a taxi because of the bad people around! The bus station was in Santa Elena on the side of a lake. Flores is an island in the lake joined to Santa Elena by a causeway. Needless to say as we pulled into the dark town at 1.30am we were quite nervous. As we stepped of the bus there were to our relief a couple of taxi drivers waiting. I grabbed one and he drove us through some scarey looking streets and across the causeway to Flores. On the island there were lots of people out on the streets (being all hallows eve) and a police presence around so we felt a bit safer. He taxi driver stopped at a hotel and was able to raise someone to come and let us in. Needless to say we took the room and went straight to bed.

Friday was a rest day. Slept in, had a relaxing walk around the island which is quite small and has nice cobblestone streets like Antigua. Very quiet with many restaurant and hotels.
Was able to check our email from the hotel room picking up an unsecured WiFi network through the bathroom window or more comfortably from the hotel roof with a great view over the lake.