I thought I'd be braving the Guatemalan jungle on my own. The arranged meeting time for a couple of others going that way had passed and they hadn't shown up at my hotel. I briefly debated booking an all-included trip to Flores in Guatemala from Palenque. It was cheap, but wouldn't be as adventurous and wouldn't allow me to see the Yachilan ruins on the way.

Turns out Aaron and Rinat had a hard time finding me and showed up an hour or so after I expected. All was well and we agreed we'd head out on the 6am bus to Frontera Corazol, the tiny, tiny Mexican town on the remote border with Guatemala.

"Sitting sideways with their knees banging."
Here's how it was supposed to work. You take a bus not to Frontera Corazol, but to the turnoff to Frontera Corazol. From there you change to a taxi which takes you the remaining 10 miles to the village. There you board a small lancha, a narrow boat with room for about ten people sitting sideways with their knees banging each other. The lancha takes you downriver an hour or so to Yaxchilan, the remote Myan ruins on the river bank. They're accessible only by boat. From there, back to Frontera Corazol to get stamped out of Mexico and board another lancha for the half hour trip upriver to Bethel, the even tinier Guatemalan village on the river. Then catch the last bus out of town for Flores, the city in the middle of northern Guatemala near the ruins of Tikal.

That's how it's supposed to work. I was quite worried things would go horribly, horribly wrong. I'd heard stories of people being stranded along the way and being saved only by a passing BBC crew. Yeah... the BBC. What the hell they were doing there, I dunno. Just goes to show you can't escape the British.

"We hopped on the dilapidated contraption..."
Anyway... amazingly, everything worked fine. We caught every bus, every boat and even met up with a couple of Argentinians and a Dutch guy who shared the lancha with us so it'd be cheaper for all. Our official welcome to Guatemala occurred on the bus leaving Bethel. We hopped on the dilapidated contraption and started heading toward the back when suddenly music started blaring and we lurched at high speed down a seriously unimproved dirt track toward Flores. There were no chickens or other farmlife, but I'm sure that's not far away.

We arrived fairly late and the six of us found a relatively cheap hotel... 3 quetzales per person per night. About five dollars. Today was a quiet day checking out the town. Flores is on an island in the middle of part of a fairly large lake. Not terribly pretty, but in a nice location. I'll probably go with these guys to check out Tikal tomorrow. There's also a national park type place across the lake. Maybe we'll get in some hiking there before leaving town.