Vacation With 'Rents: Flores, Peten

Vacation With the 'Rents: 1 of 4 Posts

It's always a great moment when a volunteer's family comes to visit, and it was even better when it was finally my own family! After 9 months, my mom and dad came down for 10 days to take a Guatemalan adventure with me. It was pretty much the best thing ever, the end. No haha, there's actually so much I could say about how great it was that I don't even know where to begin. Let me just say though that it was wonderful and so incredibly special <3 It was a big, full trip, so I'm breaking it down into 4 blog posts. Here is the first one!

We kicked off our trip by traveling waaaay north to a departamento (the equivalent of one of our "states") called Peten. It's the most northern departamento in Guatemala as well as the most isolated and undeveloped. I was excited to go to a new place in Guatemala, and it was definitely different- much more warm and humid than the Guatemala I had known. In Peten, there is a small island town called Flores. While quaint in itself, a lot of people use it as a place to stay before heading on to explore nearby Tikal. Thus, after traveling on an overnight bus, we arrived at the little Flores in Peten...

Our first day in Flores was wonderfully relaxed and slow, which was exactly how I wanted to kick off the trip. Check out how lovely Flores looks from the shore!

Flores! :)

We spent the day just walking around the streets and taking in the sights of Flores. One thing that really stood out is that they have a sliiiiight flooding issue. Living on an island is generally pretty cool, except when the lake water starts to rise! On one side of the island, all the sidewalks plus more were covered with water that had risen up from the original lake level. It was so high, in fact, that small fish and tadpoles had created little ecosystems on the sidewalks. It's a bummer for the lakeside property, but I did enjoy seeing the little tadpoles swimming around!

the water has definitely risen a bit...

TADPOLES, COOL! :)

Flores is definitely a small place, and it wasn't long before we had explored everything and retired to a shaded bar to escape the heat and drink a beer. We were on vacation after all... :)

vacation, sweet vacation

In the afternoon, we took a lancha boat across the lake to explore a couple of the small villages on the other side. The views were equally as quaint and my mom and dad loved the boat ride!

the destination

how pretty!

Pretty much native Guatemalans now

After a full day in Flores, I felt we had seen everything there was to see, but I'm still glad we made it part of the itinerary. It was a great place to relax, hang out, and eat good food before the big Tikal day! To be continued...