travel blog - to flores, in flores, out of flores

on the morning of our last day at finca ixobel
we all got up to walk into town
to try to find tamales for breakfast
instead of going out to the highway
we walked through the barrios
(or suburbs)
and got a taste of life in the countryside of guatemala
in poptun (not sure if i spelled the correctly)
we located the market
as well as some tamales
the first ones were grilled day olds
and not so good
but for 1Q a piece
they were cheap
then we found fresh ones for 3Q each
they were big and moist and very tasty
eating our tamales and a few assorted fruits
we then walked the 40 minute walk back to the farm
something about walking back from a place you didn´t know
before you got there...
it always feels like it´s shorter going back
we then caught a shuttle that was supposed to take us to flores
with two mexican guys in a rickety mini-bus
they kept switching cds before songs would finish
sometimes in mid-song
and turning the volume up and down
and stopping the vehicle a couple of times
to go out and confer about something near the wheels
and we never hit a topspeed of more than 25km/h i think
somewhere along the road
another bus came whipping up
(we´d passed this tourist bus on the way off the farm
where the drivers had stopped to chat for a several minutes)
and we were told we were on the wrong bus
so we transferred to this new bus
which took us back to poptun
and then sat in the bus ¨area¨ for a while
trying to get a few more people to go to flores
eventually we left
with a couple of locals hitching on for a short ride
and we picked up people and dropped them off along the way
when we reached the town of santa elena
we were transferred to another mini-bus
which took us to our dorms for the night
flores is a quaint little town
built on a tiny one-hill island
everything is painted in colours that stand out
from bright blues and yellows to all sorts of pastels
here i tasted tepezquintles
i was told to try this by our 3 guatemalan med student friends
it´s a type of giant rat or something
later, sarah looked it up for me in her book
it´s a paca agouti
...giant rat is easier to understand
looked sort of like pork
in texture and colour
tho a bit more tender
taste was bland-ish
which leads to me to the further conclusion
that it doesn´t matter WHAT kind of meat one eats
it´s the WAY you cook it that really counts
but at least i can say i´ve now tried giant rat
=P
walked around town bartering for internet prices
and did my first set of blogs from flores
as well as this second set as well
for 8Q an hour and a fast and stable connection
what more could one ask for?
just fyi, 1USD = 7.7Q
after our one night in the dorm
we set off on an early morning shuttle to tikal
so what can i say about our day in flores?
found real soleros - the creamsicle kind
had lunch at a restaurant where communication was a severe problem
and because of any language barrier
walked up and down the streets a few time
getting ourselves disoriented... err oriented
or something like that
ate off the street when there was some kind of tostada sale
buying food from ladies with plastic containers full of ingredients
and walked around looking for erin and mikayla who supposedly had the keys to the dorm
when they were actually out looking for us
because we´d decided to leave the keys with them
then left,
and so sarah had the keys in her backpack the whole time
oh yeah,
and the internet!
very cool
that, for me, was flores