Busses to Tikal
This entry was posted on 1/12/2007 3:41 PM and is filed under Guatemala.
TIKAL - Okay, this is part blog entry part rant. We left the farm on the morning of the 8th because we had a reservation at the Jaguar Inn in Tikal that night (thanks to Mike from Denver for hooking us up!). Anyway, it's like a 3 hour ride so we figured we had some time to relax before we left for Tikal. We were wrong!
We caught a 40Q per person collectivo to Flores (should have been 20Q) just after noon and arrived in Flores around 2:30. The collectivo driver didn't bring us to the minibus station like he was supposed to, but there were of course ample 'jittney taxis' willing to take us for 10Q or so. Screw them I thought, we're walking. We ran into two americans that told us where to catch a Tikal shuttle for 50Q per person (should have been 25Q) but after hiking 7 blocks in the hot sun we were dissapointed to learn that the last shuttle left at 2! So we took a cab to the minibus station (this time for 5Q - I wasn't paying no 10 Quetzales!!) and we learned that there were NO MORE Tikal busses. So we did the next best thing and took a 20Q per person minibus to El Remate, a town that's 30km or so from Tikal. We figured we'd catch a bus or something in El Remate for the last 30 kilometers. When we got there we found only a taxi driver - who was a friend of the minibus driver - who said he'd take us for 150Q!! What a ripoff!! But unless we wanted to hike the last 18 miles we had no choice so we paid the money.
On the ride up, the guy tried to convince me to pay 30US to stay at his sister's hotel in El Remate on our way out... remember that the Finca in Poptun only cost 13US. I wasn't having any of it. Then when we got to the park he drove us to his brother in law to get signed up for a tour! What the heck?!? We'd already paid 5 times what it should have cost us to get to Tikal and I just wanted to go to my room, clean up and then go have a nap in a hammock and maybe a beer. I was irritated because everybody wanted to get their hands in my pockets because I was a 'rich gringo'. I guess in the end I can't blame them but it's a total pain in the butt to get ripped off when you know full well what things should cost.
Tikal had it's good points though, and I'll post that later. Right now I need a snack
