We crossed to Bethel in Guatemala from Frontera Corazal by lancha. We were met by a bus from San Juan Travel in Flores. After clearing immigration we set off for Flores. The journey took about four hours mostly on a dirt track.

During the journey the San Juan rep tried to sell everyone tickets for travel to Tikal or to other places in Guatemala. We bought tickets for a shuttle to Tikal and for our trip back into Mexico via Belize. This was not really a good idea. It would have been very easy to arrange through our hotel. The tickets to Tikal were the same price as with anyone else, but the ticket to Mexico was a rip off. We paid about ten dollars more than it should have been, and the receipt had a totally unreadable scrawl on it to make it impossible to read the price. The bus to Mexico was almost an hour late and got to Chetumal three hours late. If I had to do it again I'd take the Linea Dorada bus instead.

We stayed in Casona de Isla in Flores. Flores is a nice little town on Lake Peten, it's completely full of hotels and restaurants catering for tourists, most of whom, like us, are there to visit Tikal. One thing I noticed about Flores was that some of the bars and supermarkets had guards with shotguns outside. I'm not sure why, we certainly felt safe there.

The Post Office in Flores was never open when we went past, so I decided to see if the hotel could post our postcards. I watched the very helpful lady at reception get out a tube of glue and carefully stick a 5 Quetzal stamp on top of a 3.5 Quetzal stamp so that only the edge was showing, then stick these onto the postcards. It looked like a strange way of doing it, but she seemed to know what she was doing.

Of course the cards never arrived.

After three nights we moved to La Casa de Don David, in El Remate. This is a nice place on the lake. The owners are a very helpful American/Guatemalan couple who have been there a very long time.

We took the bus from El Remate to Chetumal. The road from El Remate to the Belize border at Melchor de Menos is mostly unmetalled, once we got into Belize the road was much better. Belize looked nice, but we just drove to Belize City to drop people off, then up to Corazal and the border with Mexico, then into Chetumal. Originally we planned on going to Xcalac to do some snorkeling on the reef, but on the way through Belize city we noticed that the sea was too rough, so we decided to go back to Tulum. We got to Chetumal just in time to catch the 1530 bus to Tulum.