Flores

1      Flores is capitol and probably the biggest town of Peten – jungle and mysterious region in the north of Guatemala. It doesn’t mean it’s big – the city itself has less than 14,000 of inhabitants. It wide known touristically, because of its location but also of the town itself, cause its very picturesque. It is situated in a small islands, lying in the big lake surrounded by evergreen forest. Town is full of colourfull old fishermans house, tiny curt streets, you can also find few old churches there. You can walk around the island in maybe 20 minutes. It used to be typical fisherman’ town, now its probably half-fisherman and half-touristis, as you can see quite a lot of gringos there. To get the city you can walk or ride by a bridge joining the mainland and the island – in the past boat was necessary. We spent 2 nights there, mostly enjoying kayaking in the beautiful lake. Islands in which town is situated it’s not the only one one the lake, so you have opprotnity to visiting other island if you have boats or kayak. Flores is also popular place, for visiting Tikal – one of the most popular attraction of Guatemala, which are Mayan ruins situated in the jungle, maybe 60 km from Flores. But we just few days ago have seen Palenque ruins, we also found it a bit too expensive and – probably – crowdy (we’ve seen tens of bus yelling every morning for tourists going to Tikal) so we decided not to go there. After 2-3 days in Flores we moved in the southern directions.