A Better Belize

Welcome to San Ignacio sign
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My faith has been restored in Belize. After a short (but not short enough) stay in Belize City, I  got on a bus to San Ignacio, which is on the border with Guatemala. The bus ride was uneventful, and I got into San Ignacio about an hour and a half later. It's a pretty small town built into the hills. I met a couple from the UK on the bus and we went to find a hotel together. The one that we were looking for that our guidebook suggested turned out to be out of business, but the guy that we asked directions from showed us another place we could go. Again it was pretty much just somebody's house that they had converted into a guest house.

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I unpacked and went for a walk around town, which didn't take long. It's too bad I was there on a Sunday, because pretty much everything was closed.  I went and checked out the only suspension bridge in Belize, and got a good view of the river with all the locals swimming. The people here were really friendly, and there's lots of stuff to do in the town. Even though there was lots to do, I decided to go to Guatemala instead, because there are similar things to do, but Belize is just so expensive, it would cost way less to do the same things in Guatemala. I went out for dinner and then just hung out in my hotel and read my book.

Crossing the border was a joke...

Main Street
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The next morning I got up around 8 and picked up my freshly cleaned laundry, before going to the bookstore. I exchanged 2 books, checked out of my hotel, and then walked down to the supermarket for breakfast. I bought some fresh banana bread and some OJ and then walked down to the bus station. On the bus to Benque which is the border with Guatemala, I met 2 travellers, a Canadian form Toronto, and a guy from the UK who´s been travelling for 2 years. Once we were at Benque we shared a taxi to the border and crossed into Guatemala together. Crossing the border was a joke, there wasn't even a place for them to look at your bags, and they didn't ask me any questions about what I was bringing across.

Once over the border we were hounded by the usual taxi driver and money exchangers, but kept walking and found somewhere to sit down and get organized. We ended up getting into a collectivo, a large van that acts like a bus. We had to make a stop at the bus station first to see if we could fill the van, and after we couldn't fill it at the station we drove around town yelling "Flores!, Flores!" out the window. After a while we joined in to, and it was quite fun to drive around a town and yell at people to try to get them into our van. Eventually we left the town and headed to Flores.

Our plan was not to stay at Flores, but to get off at a highway junction and find someone else to take us the rest of the way to the Tikal Ruins. We got off in El Cruce and the 3 of us quickly flagged down another van to take us the rest of the way. About an hour later, we were in Tikal.