Dining in Carmelita

Hint: if you are in Flores probably the cheapest option to eat out is called Cafe El Zotz, right beside Cafe Yaxha (this latter has a great photo exhibition on Maya ruins but their prices are steep), with big and delicious main courses for Q25, soda included. Also, beer here costs Q5 per bottle if you buy three(!).

Another cheapie is down by the shore facing Santa Elena, below the Travel Agency San Juan, where open-grill chicken barbecue costs Q25, drinks extra. If you leave for Carmelita with the 1 pm bus from Santa Elena, right beside where the bus stands a local comedor will sell you a huge meal with beans, rice and chicken for Q15.

In Carmelita, two local comedores sell beans, tortillas, platanos and eggs for Q15. With a little advance notice, and for a few more Q, they'll can probably get you a excellent wild-crafted venison stew or some excellent blanco caught from an ancient Maya lake.

Travel from Flores (Santa Elena) to Carmelita

Local buses (camioneta) to Carmelita leave Santa Elena twice every day, at 5 am and 1 pm. From Carmelita, buses leave to Santa Elena at the same times, 5 am and 1 pm. This means that the 5 am bus from Santa Elena will arrive to Carmelita around 9 am, and the same bus will start back from Carmelita at 1 pm. Similarly, the 1 pm bus from Santa Elena will arrive to Carmelita at around 5 pm, stay there overnight and start back towards Santa Elena the next day at 5 am. The bus stop in Santa Elena is in the middle of the market, a bit difficult to find since tuk-tuks will drop you off outside the market, and at the market almost nobody knows about Carmelita buses, they will probably tell you to go to the main terminal.

To find it, walk from Flores towards Santa Elena over the bridge, then turn right at the second traffic light (there will actually be a big blue sign before the crossroads with "Carmelita" and "El Mirador" on them and a small INGUAT sticker making sure everyone knows who put up those signs), walk about 2 minutes and turn left on the second small street that leads into the market. That street will bend left and right and then open up into a busy square with microbuses and buses parked in the middle. The bus on the other side of the square goes to Carmelita. It probably won't have a sign saying so, but ask any of the other bus drivers (many buses leave from here to Sayaxché, Poptún, etc.) and they will tell you exactly. Don't get confused: many locals refer to Carmelita as "Carmela". Who knows which name was first...:)

Another way to catch the bus from Flores is to take a collectivo lancha (boat) from the north part of the island to San Andres (should be about 100Q per trip, if you look very gringo the locals might tell you there is no such thing as collectivo boats), walk up to the village and catch the Carmelita bus on the main square. With this you can miss the bustle of Santa Elena and get a scenic trip on the lake too. The bus makes it in about half an hour from Santa Elena to San Andres. The fare to Carmelita is 30Q per person, and you can keep your bags in the back of the bus, practical if it is raining, but watch out, passengers later are likely to pack boxes of fruit and animals on top of it.

The road goes around the lake from the left side, after San Andres it slowly becomes gravel, then dirt. Dos Aguadas, La Colorada, La Gloria are all stops on the way, Dos Aguadas is the place to get off if you are planning on hiking to El Zotz and Tikal. The bus will stop halfway for 10 minutes where drivers eat there little fried chicken legs at a street vendor. The road, especially after rains, is frequently too muddy for anything except serious 4x4 vehicles to pass. That means the bus might get stuck too... or it might just break down any time of the year. If the drivers can fix it then they carry on, if not they will wait for the next bus, next day or some solution to show up. Definitely not good if you are on a tight schedule, but then, taking a "shuttle" might not help either, agencies in Flores use private microbuses to take groups to Carmelita, and many times passengers have to get out and dig and push the van if they want to make it to Carmelita. All that for about 5x the price of the local bus.

Now, the other option is advertised as safe and fail proof, but in fact it is not. It involves paying a microbus driver 600Q for the roundtrip to Carmelita. Even if you are not going back with the same bus, you will have to pay that amount. And if you already paid the roundtrip, and the driver finds people wanting to leave Carmelita TO Santa Elena, he will also make them pay 600Q for the roundtrip. Or at the very least 300Q. I personally was there when the driver from Ecomaya wanted to charge 1500Q for some people who had to leave Carmelita in an emergency. Of course, everybody has the right to ask as much as they think fair, but still, be smart and do your math. If you book your trip with an agency in Flores for 200USD, the price includes private transport to and from Carmelita. From Carmelita you can also arrange emergency transport to Flores any time for 600Q.

Carmelita unveiled I.

Carmelita, Petén, Guatemala. This small village in the far north of Guatemala is a contradiction in itself. If you are the average traveler then you most probably come here to start your hike to El Mirador. But even if you spend a few days in the area, Carmelita hits you as a peaceful, tranquil little community where everyone greets everyone and locals make an effort to show hospitality to visitors. But behind the scenes, this town is rumbling and boiling with tension. It all comes down to money, of course, and that combined with the basic character of humankind creates a situation most visitors would never think of. We consider it very important for the general public to know about some facts that don’t get mentioned in NGO progress reports or in your travel agents’ office. Here is what I found out by interviewing as many locals as I could during a 2-week period in November. The „Cooperativa de Carmelita” (referred to as the “logging cooperative”) was founded in 1997, in charge of the planned logging and timber extraction commissions and representing community concession logging activities. Then, in 2001 Dr. Richard Hansen came along with ideas of developing tourism, promising wealth and prosperity for Carmelita, the closest town to the famous El Mirador ruins. At this point about 50 tourists visited the site annually, a number that did not cause a stir in the community. Then, in 2004 Patricia and Carlos (surnames omitted deliberately) and some other locals founded ASTUNAC (Asociación para Turismo y Naturaleza de Carmelita), a cooperative-style organization specifically designed to accommodate the growing number of tourists. By then visitors came by the hundreds, and that with the logging concessions still not granted fully, prompted the logging cooperative to form the Comision de Turismo within its own framework. And here is where the fight began in earnest. The logging cooperative was controlled basically by a single family in Carmelita, who from then on decided who and when would get the job of guiding tourists to El Mirador.