Crash Course in Tortilla Making

1 January 2015

I cannot believe that today is the first of January! Little did we know that everything would be closed for the holidays. When we tried to find a bus down to Rio Dulce we were told that all the buses were shut down for the day…looks like we are going to Rio Dulce tomorrow!

Sometimes you have the most fun when you have absolutely nothing planned. When we discovered that no buses were running, we decided to stop off at a little tortilla stand on the road. Six or so young girls were making tortillas from maize and water. Andrew and I have made it a point to stop and learn whenever we have the change. We spent the next 30 minutes or so learning how to make tortillas on the roadside of Santa Elena Flores.

The day only got better from there, we spoke with a nice Guatemalan Family from San Benito (them in Spanish and myself in Portuguese). We ate great food on the roadside and had another handful of ice creams. I cannot even count how many times I have had ice cream on this trip. After we have had too many Latino roadside delicacies, ice cream always seems to be our go to food.

Later in the evening I received a message from my friend from BYU who just happened to be in Flores during the same time we were there. Melissa and her husband, Christian, met up with Andrew and I to eat ice cream and talk about our adventures through Guatemala.

We have had so many great adventures in Guatemala there is absolutely no way I could talk about each of them. We get back to our hotel late in the evening and are so tired that our blogging time usually only lasts a few minutes. I am so lucky to be sharing adventures of a lifetime with my best friend in the entire world.

-Kylie

Can’t believe it’s been 6 says since we left the States. Honestly feels like it’s been much longer with everything we’ve been up to.

We stayed up late (well late for me) last night to greet the new year. We made our way onto the upper level of our hotel which essentially is an enormous balcony that you can look out to see the entire island of Flores. From here we could see the sky light up with fireworks and the resounding crack as they exploded. The noise and light came from all sides – it honestly felt like a war zone! Kylie and I kissed for the new year (first time for either of us to have a New Years kiss haha) and called it a night.

The morning brought on a different feeling to the island of Flores. No one was out after the festivities of the night before and we wandered the streets by ourselves in peaceful silence. Since the bus stations were closed for the holiday we decided to make the most of the day in Flores before buying tickets for the next day. As we wandered the streets we encountered a group of 7 girls who were making tortillas and taco shells for the local businesses. Kylie went to take a photo and I decided to approach the girls to ask if I could learn how to make them. After about 5 minutes of trying it became very apparent that making tacos by hand (from freshly ground corn kernels and water) was much more difficult than it looked like. Kylie joined me and after a few minutes of instruction we had our first ever hand-made tacos. Great little gem of an experience on the steers of Guatemala.

The rest of the day was extremely relaxing. We ate frozen yogurt, explorer the island a little more and munched on the local street food which was delicious. It’s been a nice stay here in Flores and I really think Kylie and I will come back here someday. It’s beautiful and quite peaceful here… Even with the occasional firecracker that goes off!

-Andrew