Flores Guatemala

I told you I was behind in my blogging. Sorry to bombard you but I'm trying to catch up. We are in Guatemala now. We had to postpone our journey here by 4 days due to Bob's injury. A couple of weeks ago he cut his foot on glass. We were playing a frisbee game called FrisKnok. He sliced his arch good. He had 10 stitches put in and was layed up a good part of when Cindy & Ginger were here. With that being said, we couldn't leave the island until the stitches were pulled out. Bob's foot is still healing; not quite closed all the way but he is making daily progress. We left the island on Friday morning. I wish I could say all went smoothly but no. I had the the alarm for a 5:30 wake up call. We had a 7:00 a.m. ferry to catch. When I woke it was 6:30 a.m. What the hell? Guess it helps to set a.m. and not p.m. Fortunately for us our neighbor Claire was up. She had no problem taking us to the water taxi. Amidst all the hurry of last minute packing we forgot our breakfast in the refrigerator, Bob forgot half his antibiotics on the counter and we left without leaving the keys behind. Nice, huh? O'well! We made the ferry which was very important. We had to be at the US Embassy by 11:00 a.m. to pick up our new passports. It's Friday and they close early. That went very smoothly. We were at the bus terminal waiting for our bus to Guatemala border when we were approached by what Bob thought was a shuttle driver offering a ride in a van. Sounded great in lieu of the old Blue Bird school bus. We're talking more comfortable ride & half the time. But his first price was $25 usd per person. This man is crazy. We let him know we had lived in Belize for a month & had talked to several locals on what the "real" prices were. So after several minutes of negotiations, we thought we had beat him down to a great rate of $35 Belizian dollars. SCORE! Turns out it was only the 2 of us on what we thought was a shuttle. That should have been our first clue. Bob told me later that he was wondering how the driver could make much profit from only 2 passengers. Cost of gas in Belize is about $3 usd per gallon & we were traveling around 60 miles one way. We had a very pleasant conversation w/ the driver until Bob went to pay...that's when the deal went south. Huge misunderstanding. The taxi driver was talking US dollars and Bob was talking Belize dollars. Belize's currency is dollars, just like the states. Bob was pissed to say the least! Reluctantly & with a few harsh words, Bob shoved the xtra dollars in the man's hand. Live & learn! So if you travel to Belize, make real sure you're negotiating in the same currency. Once we crossed the border we took a shuttle/ "Collectivo" to the city of Flores. It was 15 passenger mini van. No A/C and a driver from hell. Honestly, I thought we were going to die. I told him several times to slow down...he just laughed. The roads were horrible and for some reason he felt he needed to drive 70 miles (I'm guessing) and trying to avoid large pot holes. I just knew the van was going to flip over. That was horrible. We made it Flores full of dust and found our hotel. This place is nice. Flores is actually an island. I had no idea until we got here. There's a lot of construction going on but this place is going to be beautiful. The lake is huge and so clear. We have a hotel right on the lake so we get a constant breeze which makes for cool evenings. While here we plan to visit the Tikal Ruins and hang for a few days before moving south to Antigua. Bye for now. Stay tuned for Tikal pics. Love - B&B