Flores to Palenque

San Juan Travel is arrogant and monopolistic. They must have aspirations of being an airline. But for certain services in the area they are the major player. Any agency is safe. Whatever that is supposed to mean. Reliable...look at it this way.. since they own more buses than the rest combined they are more likely to be able to follow through. They may not hold your hand in the process...but they get you there. I've used them on that route. In fact, their personnel at the river were the only ones helping folks get their bags down to the boats...not at always easy task depending on river levels. If you book through one of the small agencies in Flores you may end up going San Juan anyway. I suppose you could go to an agency and say to hold you don't want San Juan..but you might have to wait a day or two.

Look.. it's a bus from Flores...usually a step up from a chicken bus. Plain dirt road...not rough. They stop at a village for potty. There is a stand selling food. Tamales are good and steamed enough to kill anything. At the river...check out of Guat. Take the boat. Allegedly things are a tad different lately on the other side but someone points for you. In a worse case scenario, once in Mexico there are a couple ways to get to Palenque if the onward transport didn't show. Don't sweat it.

Going between Flores and Palenque, you can just do it yourself. If you take the 5 am Pinita bus, you can go all the way to La Técnica, after customs at Bethel, and then just pay for a boat across the river, not down it, so it should be cheaper. If you have not already seen the wonderful Yaxchilan ruins along that route, this is a good approach too.

Just do it yourself. If you hunt around you can find a bus or a shuttle to take you to Bethel where you check out of Guatemala at immigration. When you reach Frontera Corozal, Mexico there is an immigration station but often not open so if is closed just go on to Santto Domingo de Palenque and check into Mexico there. Have some photos on my website of the river there and the boats used to make the crossing. wolfcalls.com

If you want to avoid San Juan Travel or the tour agencies altogether, it is very easy to do this trip yourself, and takes the same amount of time for half the cost. We were nervous doing it ourselves would not be as simple as the forums promised, but we just did the trip today and it was easy as pie.

1- Take the 5 am Pitina bus from the Santa Elena Terminal (a 5 minute cab ride from Flores) to La Tecnica. Taxi - 20Q ($2.50 USD) Bus - 50 Quetzales/ea ($6.25USD)

2 - The bus will stop at immigration near the border so you can get your stamp and pay the 40 Q ($5 USD) exit fee. No one told us about this fee in advance, but it looks like everyone pays it.

3 - The bus drops you right at the dock in La Tecnica. Hop on the next lancha boat to the other shore (you can just say ¨la frontera¨ (the border) although everyone knows where you are headed.) This seemed pretty coordinated with the bus, we went right from the bus onto the boat. 20 Q/ea ($2.50 USD)

4 - At the dock on the other side, a free taxi will take you to immigration and then to the collectivo (minivan) terminal up the hill from the dock. The collectivo company pays the taxi for bringing you to them so its no charge to you.

5 - Buy a ticket on the next collectivo to Palenque. They leave every hour (except 9 am and 10 am) and cost 100 Pesos. From our 5 am bus we hopped on the 11 am collectivo. 100 Pesos/ea ($7.50 USD)

6 - We did all pay a 15 pesos ($1) fee on the way out of town to an official.

7 - The collectivo minvan drops you right in the center of Palenque, near the main drag of hotels, restaurants, banks, etc.

So all in all we did this for less than $20 each, almost half of what the people with San Juan Travel paid. Plus we didn´t have to deal with all the hassles people talk about with the tour groups. We wondered why people pay more for the same route, and thought maybe they get there faster, but we were literally put on a collectivo with the group from San Juan Travel! So they paid double for at least in part the exact same ride! One other suggestion is to have Mexican pesos with you for the journey. There is no atm at the border, the collectivo rate for quetzales is horrible and we had to convince the collectivo office to allow us to pay when we arrived in Palenque and could find a bank. Otherwise a smooth, easy, cheap way to do this crossing!