The border crossing into Guatemala was painless, something that certainly cannot be said about the Guatemalan buses which threw you up in the air every 100 yards or so. It wasn't too long at least before we pitched up in Flores, though it took a good few hours to get full feeling back in my ass. We found a decent looking hotel looking over the lake so wandered in only to find Blake and Wei-Lein from Playa and Caye Caulker making their dinner. By this time I'm pretty sure they think that were stalking them but was good to have the 'playa crew' back to full force once more.

Flores is a pretty small town but a really great place to chill out for a few days. The town is surrounded my the massive Peten Itza lake, which was just a hop, skip and jump away from the hotel and made a great alternative to a morning shower. With temperatures reaching 43 degrees every day we were there it seemed like half the town spent most of its time jumping off the pier to cool down.

Despite its problems and the fact that 86% of the population is in poverty, Guatemala is one of the friendliest places ive ever been. Even with some of my worst attempts at spanish everyone seemed happy to help and if they couldnt understand me theyd find someone who could interpret my 'spanish' waffling - more often than not it was directions to the nearest taco stand. One of our worst attempts at Spanish came on the cultural trip to pizza hut where Mark and I ordered a meal for 2 each. It wasnt until the waitress had to bring over an extra table to fit all our food on that we clicked on to what we'd done.

The main reason for stopping in Flores was closeby Tikal, a huge Aztec ruined city to the North. Tikal was without a doubt the biggest and the most impressive ruins I saw in Central America. Set in the jungle, every clearing was full of massive temples and ruins of what was once a fully blown city. Even more exciting that that however, apparently Tikal was the site of the Ewak village when they made Star Wars, and its not hard to see why. From the top of some of the largest temples it really does look like another world, with mist rising from the jungle which goes on as far as you can see.

After sweating around the jungle looking at temples for 10 hours we spent the next few days breaking up swinging in the hammocks on the hotel roof with a quick jump in the lake until we finally manned up enough to get back on the dreaded chicken buses, the most stressful mode of transportation known to man, heading to the centre of the country to the beautiful Semuc Champey.

James