El Remate

Oh hi! Continuing our Ruta Maya into Guatemala, we had to visit Tikal, so we decided to pull out all the stops to avoid the tourist hell that was Tulum, and plan a camping trip at the ruins. First we decided to visit El Remate, a quiet two road village on the way to Tikal.

We left Flores by mad tuktuk and caught a collectivo at the market bus station with some locals. El Remate, like Flores, is also on the shores of Lago de Peten Itza, but at the other end. It is much more rural than Flores with a few hostels and shops along the main road and a few houses behind the road, a much quieter place in all.

Here is one view of El Remate facing towards Tikal, our Hostel Hermano Pedro, is on the dirt track to the right. We sat here under a very shady tree, waiting to hail the collectivo's that came down this road. It was extremely hot here. The Lonely Planet, rather unfairly, describes the heat as hell on earth. Oh come on! It is scorchio, but that's great!


From the same shady tree looking across the road to Lago de Peten Itza, a man on a mountain bike herds up his horses. The horses seemed to roam freely on the road and around the village and lake. We saw them being gathered together in this fashion and being ridden bare back by locals who cheerfully waved to us.


Here we are at Hostel Hermando Pedro. A two storey wood and stone place that was totally lovely! It was like Greatwood Camp, except we didn't have to do the bunk bed thing!


A beautiful wood cabin type room, with a hammock outside on the veranda. The room was complete with lovely details such as this. (Well I think its lovely!)


Check it out, our lovely open air bathroom, with super lush shower. Wiji nearly had a breakdown mind, when he thought only hot water came out the shower. It was just hot from sitting in the pipes...crisis averted! LMAO, quality.


Here he is showing off 'Greatwood' to the max, after enjoying one of many cold showers, and sitting in front of the fan. I could be found outside in the hammock.


There were some nice details to the place, like the planting. We really appreciated it, especially when we reminded ourselves of how ridiculously cheap it was to stay there.


One our first day we decided to mission it off exploring around the lake to have a swim before the sunset. On our way to the lake we passed through some wild common ground. We became aware of some non-stop snuffly pig grunting noises. We made the noises back (well what harm can it do?) and promptly he appeared from the undergrowth to check us out, continually grunting away. He had a good look at us, kept on chatting to himself and wandered off in the evening sunshine. We saw lots of pigs running about, hairing across the road, in and out of peoples gardens, mostly cheerfully covered in mud.


When we got down to the lake, we realised that it wasn't quite like Flores. We couldn't spot anywhere to get in the water. The banks were too muddy to walk on and the jetty's didnt get you out far enough to swim off. Oh well we settled for a walk.


Checking out the shore line. What we thought was gravel turned out to be millinons of tiny fresh water shells. A small version of the shells used in mayan art.


Looking out over Lago del Peten Itza. As we walked around the lake we realised that the locals didn't seem to swim in it, but the women washed mounds of clothes in this particular spot out on the rocks. We eased into the evening back at 'greatwood' by chillaxing to the exotic and very loud cincades and some very enthusiastic and joyful singing comming from the Evangelical church down the lane. We really did have a brilliant nights sleep.


A great shot of a very happy Wiji the next morning with a super deluxe breakfast. Fried plantain, cheese, black beans with eggs and ham (really spam-dex ham, but never mind). This place was great, it over looked the lake and had a rope bridge to a vantage point.


Looking back down the rope bridge towards the comedor. The garden below looked beautiful, so I decided to have a look.


Wiji joined me and the kind owner gave us a tour of his fruit trees, thus solving many a fruit query! Here is one variety of papaya (he had three). Sadly I really dislike these because they have a cheesy twang to them. They are picked when they turn orange, and unlike the ones you can buy in Britain, these are the size of marrows.


Here is a Guava tree! The precious fruit protected from an insect that likes to eat it by plastic bags. He picked and cut one up on the spot for us all to eat. It was delicious. He also has two types of banana palm, sugar cane, an avocado tree, orange, mandarine and lime trees and many decorative plants including orchids native to Peten that were in flower.


He showed us an apple tree, native to Peten. He picked us a couple of the apples for us to try. Here is one in my Caravaggio style hand. It was super juicy and apple like in texture, but looked like a small pear. The Guava is in my other hand. He seemed really pleased that we were so interested. It was a real treat.


After our lovely breakfast we packed all our camping stuff into my backpack and decided to leave the rest at 'greatwood' for the night while we went off to Tikal. We bumped into the owner of the hostel whilst waiting for a collectivo at the roadside, he seemed surprised that we were off for the night, but did understand what we were up to eventually, possibly!