Day 19: Flores, Guatemala

After a pretty awful, smelly bus ride we pulled into Santa Elena… at six in the morning… in the rain. Funny enough but the local market was already bustling, rain be damned! As soon as we got off the bus we were accosted by the usual hoard of yelling taxi drivers. We grabbed the first one and headed across the causeway into Flores (an island town in the middle of a lake).

We were hoping to head to the one and only hostel in the whole town but it turned out to be full and with really no other choice, we reluctantly took the taxi driver’s recommendation (many drivers work in cooperation with a particular hotel for a commission when they bring new customers in) for Hotel Santa Rita or as it will be known from now on “the moldy death trap”. The night guard was visibly startled at our sopping, haggard appearance but did finally let us check in. We just wanted to sleep for a few hours and have a shower since the ones at Villa Lupita in Panajchel were black taped together and had stray wires hanging out of the hot-water mechanism. Naked electrocution anyone?

We paid up for the room but in our desire to sleep, we forgot to specify that we were staying through the next night for that price. Got a couple hours of sleep before heading to a decent shower. Lin was quite smelly so she had to go first.

(The debacle unfolds as told by Lin)

What a dump! It was about 6:30AM and we hadn’t showered in two days. All I wanted was a decent, warm shower and some fresh clothes. Thinking I’d let the water heat up a little bit, I turned on the visibly janky shower (hanging wires with a little bit of badly wrapped black electrical tape, connected up with the room’s single naked light bulb) and let it run for three or four minutes as I got ready to get in. Out of nowhere, the shower head starts shooting orange sparks and out comes a big, stinking puff of smoke! I yelp and Saben comes rushing in to see what’s the matter. We stand back and exchange puzzled, freaked out glances until he finally says we should turn it off. Fearing imminent electrocution and perhaps fiery death, I hesitate and Saben steps in very carefully to turn off the knob. Whew…no death or electrocution this early in the morning! And, unfortunately, no shower…again. We decide to take a little horizontal sleep since sleeping in bus seats is pretty much killer. A couple hours later we went to the front desk to retrieve our room key which we didn’t get when we checked in a few hours earlier. In broken spanglish and lots of gesturing, we were informed that the room we were occupying didn’t have a key and the lock was actually broken. We were then kind of instructed to move to the room next door, which, luckily did have a key! The room was equally disgusting and had dollar signs and flowers decorating the ragged sheets. The shower looked even worse than the first one but, still determined to get myself at least a little clean and smelling a bit better, I turned on this “new” shower to let it heat for a minute or two. Cold…ugh. I jumped in and soaped up as quickly as possible while keeping as much of my body as possible out of the icy water. Just as I had soaped myself at record speed, I started to smell something (not me). I carefully looked up with some amount of fear. There was smoke slowing rising from the shower head and I could see a little orange spark slowly growing and ready to burst out from its little gap in the black tape. I leaped out and stood outside the shower at a (probably unsafe) distance deliberating if and when to turn of the shower. I yelled for Saben who carefully reached into the shower and turned off the knob since I was soaking wet. Aha! Cheated death twice in the course of about three hours! But, problem: I’m all soapy. Or, at least I smell better but I can’t just towel off. Sink bath here I come! The sink wasn’t much better than the shower with it’s mysterious particles hanging around it and the faucet that swivels because it’s not actually attached to the base, but at least I knew I probably wouldn’t get electrocuted! After an interesting, frigid sink bath, we got ready to explore Flores. Unfortunately, all our clothes are really dirty from exploring Copan, and on top of all this, it’s still raining. So I’m kinda clean now but I still have to wear dirty clothes.

What a great morning.

 

(Insert photo that we lost of scary shower here)

We finally made our way out to breakfast thinking the worst was over. We got the standard Desayuno Chapin. It was the worst food we have ever eaten, next to the baleada Lin had in Copan (beyond dreadful) the beans were burnt, the coffee was a couple of days old, the cheese was well past off and the cook was drunk (really really drunk… at 9 in the morning) but we were starving and ate it anyway (not happy stomachs later). And, it’s still raining. Not a great start to the day. Strangely, nowhere in town sells umbrellas even though everyone else is carrying a nice, big umbrella. After a fun little auto rickshaw back over the causeway to the market in Santa Elena, we score a couple of umbrellas (Saben refused to use the first one we found since it had flowers on it) and cab it back to Flores. We walked in another 5-6 circles around the island (it’s really, really small), then went to try the hostel again (Los Amigos) to see if they’ll have any space for tomorrow night. Luckily they do so we reserve a couple of bunks and (kind of) cheerfully head back to the “the moldy death trap”. We “snuck out” our backpacks to the hostel for the next night since we didn’t know if we might get screwed into paying for two nights at “TMDT” since technically we checked in way before check out time. Pretty boring night after we got rid of our packs (literally everything). Just sitting in the room staring at the shower waiting to bolt when it catches fire. Bored out of our skulls, we headed out to wander around town. We were walking around the centro and, for some occasion unknown to us, there were lots of festivities going on. The school band performed in the centro’s basketball court which also doubles as a soccer field and the town drunk jumped in and out of the band’s constantly moving formation to dance with his hat and a hanky. Kinda funny, but also kinda weird. Later we happened past the town auditorium where a local band was performing covers of American songs…in Spanish…with a random, very drunk dwarf (no joke) dancing very provocatively on the stage, to the audience’s and the band’s confusion. Kinda funny, but also kinda weird. As we were making our way around and out of the centro, we saw a firework-laden wooden bull costume thing with a guy beneath it running straight towards us! The fireworks were just beginning to go off and most were shooting straight into the huge crowd surrounding the “bull.” There was a great deal of screaming, laughing, and running in directions as the bull charged toward people with fireworks shooting off his back! We followed suit and joined in the running from the bull to keep from getting burned. All in all a really fun experience! During this whole time, we didn’t see a single other traveler or tourist.

(We were expecting an uneventful night so we left our cameras in the room)

After a bit, we made our way back to the hotel and continued our fire watch…