Posts tagged 'Ruins'

After Semuc Champey I headed to Flores, the city closest to Tikal. It was another long minibus day, 11 hours on the bus, but at least this time I got a single seat near the door without one in front of it, so I had plenty of legroom and nobody taking up the space where my shoulders go. I stayed the night in a hotel where I was the only guest. I really don't think the travel agent made much effort to get me in somewhere cheap as I had to walk past a few different hostels to get there. I made good use of the air conditioning at least!

At the end of our week in Xela, Rachel, Sarah and I headed back to Antigua. Sarah had to fly home from Guatemala City in a few days time, and I was happy to go back and share the amazing ruins with them and explore a few more.

Next stop for me was Antigua Guatemala, the original capital of Guatemala until they got sick of all the earthquakes knocking it over every few decades. It's a very beautiful city, littered with ruins of majestic old ruins of buildings that the government doesn't have enough funds to do preservation works to, so most of them are fenced off without so much as a plaque to say what it was.

After a cram packed week up in the USA, I felt like I really needed a bit of a rest, so once I got back down to Honduras I headed directly down to Lago Yejoa, the home of the D&D Brewery.

On my last day in Siem Reap I decided to rent myself a mountain bike and pedal myself out to the ruins. The flatness of the countryside made riding a little easier, but the heat was certainly challenging. I rode in to Angkor Thom, the largest of all the ancient sites, and headed for the east gate (not the victory gate, which is also on the east wall, which is the one the roads pass through).

The trail leading up to it was rough and bumpy with lots of large rocks and didn't seem like it got too much traffic. Upon reaching the gate, I was met by the spectacular sight of the massive gate poking out of the jungle, without a huge clearing around both sides as all the other gates seem to have. I got off my bike and explored for a bit, and sat down to reapply sunscreen and got hassled by a bunch of butterflies that just kept on landing on me and my stuff, the bullies!