Guatemala... Flores and El Mirador

I arrived into Flores after spending the day on buses coming from Belize City. It's about 130km but takes forever because the roads are pretty terrible, especially on the Guatemalan side of the border. Flores is a lovely little town - it sits on a tiny island in the middle of quite a large lake. All I knew about Flores before arriving apart from it's setting was that it was close to Tikal, one of the largest archaeological Pre-Columbian Mayan sites in the world. The size of Tikal is unmatched, most sites have one or two big pyramids whereas Tikal has maybe six or seven. The place is simply amazing, some of the pyramids are so big it's hard to fathom how they were ever constructed. Tikal also has a great setting, it's right in the heart of the rainforest about 60kms from Flores which is the nearest town. In terms of setting it compares with Palenque in southern Mexico but in size it dwarfs it.

The following day I signed up to a five day hike in the El Mirador basin which is a huge geographical area in far northern Guatemala boxed in on all sides by Mexico. Few people live in this very remote area which is all tropical rainforest and low lying swamp. In the heart of the El Mirador basin is one of the earliest political states in Mesoamerica, El Mirador. The site is so remote though that a huge amount of it is still largely uncovered. It also means that tourism to the area has still not taken off and anyone who wants to see it either hikes or flies in by helicopter. I wanted the latter but unfortunately I just couldn't justify spending 4 months budget on it. There were five of us on the hike including our guide, a French guy I'd been traveling with since Mexico City, an Israeli girl and a Canadian guy.

We set off the next day and got the bus from Flores to the last town before the rainforest proper begins, a place called Carmelita. It's a tiny village of about 500 people and it's where we spent our first night, the guides mum being our hostess.

The next day we set off walking and did about 28kms in all making camp by about five in the afternoon. Camp was basically an area cleared of trees with enough room for us to sling our hammocks. We had all the food and water we needed as four horses came along with us. The entire basin has sites dotted all over the place varying from huge mounds of earth to proper excavated sites which poke out of the rainforest. On our first morning we (I) woke (was woken) at 5am and climbed (and was dragged) to the top of a pyramid very close by to watch the sunrise. In truth it was definitely worth it because it gave us the first sense of how far we really were from everything.

On the second day we hiked for 35kms and ended up at another camp which was a little bigger and even had a makeshift football pitch. The pitch came with giant roots where the penalty spot should be, rocks just small enough not to be able to see but big enough to cut your feet on and a gradient so ridiculous that football was all but impossible to play. Is it any wonder Guatemala doesn't produce any football players.

The second camp was in the heart of El Mirador site. To clarify, the geographical area is called the El Mirador basin, within that area there are hundreds of Pre-Columbian Mayan sites and the most impressive of them is called El Mirador. On the third day after resting up we walked around the El Mirador site which was very close to our camp. The site is bigger than even Tikal in size but unfortunately because so much of it is still uncovered it isn't as impressive. What makes it special is that you are so remote and there are no other tourists budging into you and asking for you to take pictures of them posing like an idiot. The stand out of El Mirador is the giant pyramid El Dante which was constructed roughly 2,500 years ago and up until the late 80's was still the largest man made structure in Guatemala.

On our forth day we set off back to Carmelita via the camp we spent our first night at. The forth day was the hardest and we were all starting to feel the strain. I guess a good way of avoiding unnecessary pain especially in the feet would be to wear proper hiking boots. As you will remember though my shoes (not even hiking boots) were stolen on a bus in Belize, so I wore my flip flops the whole way. I was going to buy some shoes in town before we left but the trip was planed so last minute that I ran out of time.

We decided to sleep on top of the pyramid close to camp on our forth night (the same pyramid we climbed for sunrise) as it was a full moon. The effect you get when you are at the highest point around and it's a full moon is something like being at the bottom of the sea and looking up. The sky towards the horizon was supremely dark but as it got closer to the moon it became a navy blue. The top of the pyramid was lit up to such an extent that at 1am it could well have been dusk or dawn.

We hiked back to Carmelita the village we spent our first night at on our final and then the next morning returned to Flores on the bus. It was a fantastic trip and something that should be done by everyone with enough time who travels through Flores, Guatemala. The actually hiking was pretty straight forward in the sense that we weren't constantly going up and down and the terrain was all fairly easy to walk on hence why I could do more than 120kms in flip flops.