From Tikal, we look a mini-bus into the city of
Flores and stayed there for a night. Flores is the capital of El
Petén, a district which covers northeastern Guatemala. It is
built on a tiny island; it takes about 5 minutes to walk from one end to
the other.
After finding a hotel, we walked back over the bridge to the nearby town
of Santa Elena and wandered around the local market.
The market consisted of small stalls along this street.
Red three-wheeled mototaxis darted back and forth.
These folks are making tortillas by hand over a wood
fire.
This is the view out of our hotel room. The (even
smaller) island in the distance had an archaelogical museum with Mayan
artifacts.
Almost all the buildings had red roofs.
Here is our hotel, one of the tallest buildings on the
island.
The next morning, we had some extra time before
our flight back to Belize City, so we walked over to the docks and found
a lancha to take us on a tour of the lake around Flores. We
haggled him down to 75 quetzals for the ride, since we had calculated
that we would have just enough Guatemalan money left over to get to the
airport.
The church is the tallest building on the island.
Did I mention that Flores is really small?
This is the town of San Miguel, on the north shore of
the lake. The red-roofed boat is similar to the one we are riding in
(which we forgot to get a picture of).
Here we are approaching the causeway to the mainland.
The water under the bridge was very shallow and choked with reeds, so as
we passed underneath it, the driver had to cut the engine and
paddle.
Here is an aerial view of Flores.