Buenos Aires to Vegas - The Trek

The shuttle ride to the town of Flores ranks as one of the worst of the trip. However in retrospect I have been unusually lucky with my bus rides in general. I was jammed in a small seat at the back with very little leg room. I also wasn ´t feeling too well after over-indulging in the Mexican buffet the previous night. Matters were not improved as the roads were decidedly bumpy. 8 hours of this was not fun. Anyway we got into the small island town of Flores and checked into Los Amigos hostel. The place was large and quite bustly . The staff were friendly and I was happy with my spacious dorm room. Riverdance and Irina had been there a few days prior and complained of some weird biting bug that gave them a bad skin reaction. I questioned some of the staff who reassured me that all was fine. Stig (Norway) and I walked around the little island town which was fairly quaint and quiet. We did this until our bellies reminded us that it was feeding time. The restaurant at Los Amigos is purel...

For some reason my bus was close to empty meaning that I had the luxury of 4 adjacent seats to myself. Sleep was a definite option and I took advantage. Shotgun wielding civilians 6 hours later we pulled into the small town of Lanquin and got dropped at the El Retiro Hotel. This place was really cool! It is a collection of thatch-roofed houses on the banks of a clear, strong flowing river. There is a huge open plan design to it and a lot of travellers chill out around the river and bar/restaurant. It is here that I meet the first South Africans I have seen for a very long while. They had just completed their Chartered Accountancy articles and were moving down towards South America for the next 7 months. The hostel does large international buffet meals every evening. That evening it was an American buffet with meatloaf and all sorts of other salads and breads. We played a late game of drinking Jenga which got pretty amusing. El Retiro Hostel I signed onto the Semuc Champey tour. I...

The route to Antigua was not as direct as I had hoped so we needed to detour to the Honduran town of Copan which was right near the border. This town is actually worthy of a visit itself as it is where the Mayan ruins of Copan are located. I had seriously considered going to visit the ruins there but after several discussions with people who had already gone I decided not to. The reason was that I am scheduled to go to Tikal which is known as THE Mayan ruin site to visit. If I was to see Tikal there would not be a strong reason to see Copan unless I was absolutely fascinated by the Mayans... which I was not. Copan was also pretty pricey to visit too! So we arrived in the pretty little town and booked into a hostel for the night along with purchasing a ticket to Antigua, Guatemala, in the morning. At the time my companions were Alex (Eng), Emilie (Fr Can), Polly (Eng) and Olivia (Eng). We were all still exhausted from the previous night´s party and the day spent travelling so we a...