A few impressions of Lake Petén Itzá

 

A quiet side street in busy Flores

A loud sound, a bit reminiscent of the warning call of a squirrel, announces that the pale yellow gecko on the wall of the rooftop terrace has come out for its nightly hunting session. For such a small creature it has a pretty big voice.

It's not exactly quiet down in the street either: music is coming from different bars along the beach, and now, shortly before eleven, the parties are far from over. It's not quite like last night, however, when the celebrations really seemed to have taken off. For now, the fireworks have stopped, but quite likely they'll be going off as soon as it gets light; they have been since we arrived three days ago, and I remember the same thing from our first visit to Flores seven years ago. We've been relaxing here – mostly – since we arrived, the only really important item on the agenda the booking of our jungle hike to the Maya site of El Mirador, a five-day adventure that will start tomorrow morning at five at the office of the Expedici Turismo Cooperativa Carmelita right around the corner. Our bags are packed – a small one for us to carry, just for a few personal items and water, and a bigger one containing a change of clothes etc. for the five day/four night tour. Thanks to our inattentiveness regarding pushy and dishonest tour agencies, something we thought we had learned by now, we had a very frustrating experience with the booking process, something that could – and should! - have gone very smoothly, but we did manage to sort it out in the end, at least we hope so. We'll see for sure tomorrow morning when we arrive with our voucher.

Since it's only a few hours until the night is over I'll just post some pictures taken today on an excursion across the lake to a hotel we wanted to look at for when we get back from the hike on Friday. 

 

View of Flores

from the outlook on the other side

... and looking to the other side

It will be as hot and humid as for our hike to the Ciudad Perdida in Colombia in the spring, but the terrain should be easier to negotiate: here, it is mostly flat, we were assured. In any case, we look forward to it very much, and I'll write about it when we get back.

 Here is one more view of the lake at sunset. It looks almost unreal, but this is what it was like tonight.