Well that’s it then. I think I’m officially too old for hostels. People watching videos without headphones, having loud, late conversations in the dorm room, people leaving their dishes in the sink or their leftover food in pots like no bugger else would want to use them. It all grates on my aging nerves. I’m a grumpy old woman now and over the course of the last year every dorm room we’ve stayed in has chipped away at my tolerance levels. The final straw was last night when they switched the AC on last night and we all agreed on 24°C, then someone switched it to 26°C which made our night less than enjoyable. I’m ready for my porch and my rocking chair and my lawn that exists for the sole purpose of being something I can yell at kids to get off.

I’ve not been in the best of health either recently, my stomach hasn’t been great, I’ve been having to slink off for emergency afternoon shits and I’ve not always had access to a toilet. A stye cropped up on my right eye this morning so that can fuck off. There’s a rash growing just where the underwire of my bra sits which could be anything from an abrasion to shingles. I’m tired near constantly. Plus I’m really not handling the heat very well at all at the moment and there’s literally no escape from it where we’re staying in Flores. The AC gets switched on at night but there are exactly zero fans to cool you down during the day so you just have to sit as still as you can whilst you slowly take liquid form. Fuck me, it’s hot here. The ground is lava. The air is lava. Everything is fucking lava. The “feels like” temperature is hovering around 43°C. It’s obnoxious.

We ended up spunking money on Q30 beers (this is a lot in Guatemala) at a fancy bar yesterday afternoon because it had AC and I just needed to stop my brain from boiling in my skull for half an hour. Then we went to the Sky Bar and ordered a bottle of wine so we could have an ice bucket, the contents of which we smeared all over our necks and faces like absolute maniacs. They did point a powerful air blower at us as soon as we sat down so we resolved to give them all of our money. This is clearly how you get me to part with my cash these days; just make it so I’m not melting and I’ll hand over my card and PIN. It was actually a really nice evening. We ate some food, drank some happy hour cocktails, watched the rain on the horizon and silently begged it to come over to us. We’d not really had a lot of rain since Caye Caulker and I think we’d gotten used to it cooling the air down for us over the last couple of months.

We only had one full day in Flores and we’d intended to spend it wandering but the heat was so fucking ridiculous we simply did not. We spent the day in hammocks at the fanless hostel just sweating a lot. It would have been nice to take refuge in a bar but we’re meant to be reigning in our spending rather than hurling money at substandard beer, and whilst I’m on a rant let’s talk about Gallo, which is the beer branding you’ll see all over the country despite it being fucking awful piss water. It really is a grim beer. Moza isn’t too bad but it’s a dark beer which I’m not a fan of. Fortunately Guatemala borders Mexico and Mexico does a few alright cervezas so I guess we’ll be drinking Modelo for the next three weeks.

As the evening rolled around and our stomachs started to threaten to digest themselves we headed back to Sky Bar for their delicious food, happy hour drinks and high powered fans. I wouldn’t say we experienced everything Flores had to offer. We’ve been here but we’ve not BEEN here and yeah. I’m not great right now and I think that’s okay. It’s okay to not be having a great time every single day, even if you are hashtag living your best life.

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

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Flores, Petén, Guatemala

Stayed at: Hostal La Terraza, Flores

Useful shit to know…

• To get from El Remate to Flores you can stand anywhere along the main road and flag a microbús.
• They pass by every half hour between 5.15am and 6pm.
• It cost Q25. I’m not sure how long it should take, it took us an hour but we got stuck at roadworks for ages.
• They were heading to the terminal which is a good couple of kilometres from the entrance to the island. They let us down a bit closer at 16.917294, -89.889673 when they knew we wanted the island.
• You can take a tuk tuk the rest of the way if you really can’t be arsed walking in the heat with all your shit.
• We were charged Q20 each which seems like too much but it’s little money so we were happy to pay.