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| Central America is where old, yellow school
buses come to die. We sit in one and chug across the border from Belize
into Guatemala. The bus company charges $1 per hour of travel time (the
bus sputters along at 30 kilometers per hour). With time on our hands
we brush up on our Spanish because few locals hablan Ingles. Eventually
we make it to Flores. Travelers come to Guatemala because it offers Central
America on steroids: the most dramatic geology (active volcanoes, muggy
jungle), the most authentic Mayan ruins, the most tumultuous history (the
region's longest civil war, 30 years), and the worst in banana republic
dictatorships. Guatemala is the Mayan heartland. Ironically, Mayans take
top billing in Guatemalan travel brochures yet suffer the hardest repression
from the Spanish descended power cliques. |
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This toucan is a living cartoon yet even with an improbable
proboscis it carries an aloof and condescending air, as if you're ridiculous
for not having an oversized beak
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| Flores thrives as a jungle capital. It's
built on an island on Lago de Petén Itzá. Santa Elena, the sister city,
stands on the opposite lakeshore. Flores has an organized layout, with
its church and government building arranged around a plaza that tops the
hill in the center of the island. At the end of the Mayan empire, Flores
remained as the country's last functioning Mayan ceremonial center. Spanish
soldiers destroyed the city's pyramids, temples and idols and drove the
Mayan citizens into the jungle. Could this be the place known in myth
as the 'lost' Mayan city? |
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