On the road to guatemala...and start of El Mirador trek

After a few big margarita infused jungle nights at El Panchan, Sarah and i were off to Flores Guatemala, our first border crossing experience! Which turned out to be pretty anticlimatic, after our boat ride from mexico, we arrived at the immigration station, filled out our forms and ended up up giving the immigration officers a lift to Flores in our bus.

Which began the next part of our trip planning the trek to El Mirador, the largest site of pre-classic maya!

Oh the trek, 120kms all up to get there and back, plus the walking around at the el mirador site, left us with some very sore feet! The first day we had to travel by bus from flores to a little town on the edge of the mayan biosphere called carmelita.  With all twelve of us trekkers in the bus, plus our guide and driver and all our gear/water, we seemed to have overloaded the bus, having three flat tyres on our way to carmelita. 

When we finally made it, it was a few hours later then when should have been there to start the trek, and our guides were worried that we would be walking the dark.  Which ended up happening to me and three other guys, we had separated from the front group and had to make our way through the last hour of the trek in darkness with no guide to the first campsite El Tintal! I was fairly scared but luckily these guys didnt seem to mind and had it under control so all worked out fine, and we eventually got to El tintal and were ready for some much needed dinner and a seat by the fire :)