Four days in Flores and Tikal: an island town, and the city the jungle took back

Three nights on an island in Lake Petén Itzá, with a full day inside Tikal, an afternoon at Yaxhá timed for the light, a cave under Santa Elena and the overgrown ruin across the water.

Copy this itinerary
Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Flores (Guatemala)
Places
8 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Cortés passed this way in 1525 and left the Itzá kingdom alone. So did everybody else, for another 172 years: the island in the middle of Lake Petén Itzá was defended, remote, surrounded by swamp forest, and not obviously worth the trouble. Noh Petén finally fell in March 1697, which makes it the last independent Maya state, holding out a century and three quarters after Tenochtitlan.

The Spanish knocked the temples down and built a town on top, and what is there now is a small grid of coloured houses with red tile roofs, rising to a church and a plaza at the top, on an island you can walk around in a quarter of an hour. A causeway connects it to Santa Elena on the shore, which is where the buses, the banks and the market are, and which nobody comes to look at.

Forty kilometres north, under high forest, is Tikal: a city of tens of thousands of people at its height, abandoned by about the tenth century, and not reported to the outside world until the 1840s. It is the reason most people come, it deserves a whole day rather than the half-day the tours sell, and Flores turns out to be a good place to spend the rest of the time.

Highlights

  • The Great Plaza at Tikal, two pyramids facing each other across cut grass
  • The view from the top of Temple IV, out over unbroken forest with three roof combs sticking out of it
  • Sunset over the lagoon at Yaxhá, from a pyramid nobody else has heard of
  • Howler monkeys starting up in the dark, which sounds nothing like a monkey
  • Flores at dusk, when the lake goes flat and the whole island turns orange

Where to stay

Flores, three nights

The island is about four hundred metres across, built up the sides of a low hill, with a plaza and a white church on the crown and everything else falling away from it in narrow cobbled streets. There is one road round the shoreline, a handful of piers, and a permanent low-level trade in boat trips. Walking the whole circuit takes a quarter of an hour, which people do most evenings without noticing they have done it.

Almost everything a visitor uses is on the island: the hotels, the terraces, the tour agencies, the places selling bus and shuttle tickets. The prices are a little higher than the mainland and nobody minds. It is also, unusually for northern Guatemala, somewhere people are relaxed about walking around after dark.

The Petén around it is flat limestone forest, thinly populated, with Maya sites in it at every scale from Tikal down to unexcavated mounds nobody has named. Several are reachable in a day from here. El Mirador, the biggest of all, is not: that is a multi-day trek or a helicopter.

Day by day

Day 1 in Flores (Guatemala)

The island, and the overgrown city across the water

Arrive, drop your bag, and walk round the island before doing anything else. It takes fifteen minutes and it orients you completely: the causeway on the south side, the boat piers on the north, the church and plaza at the top, and a ring of restaurants with their tables out over the water. Half the buildings are painted in colours that would look absurd anywhere else.

Then take a boat across to Tayasal, on the peninsula 250 metres north. This is where the Itzá capital actually stood, and where the last Maya kingdom was ended in 1697. There is very little to see in the conventional sense: the pyramids are there but they are green mounds under trees, and you need the boatman to walk you to them or you will miss them entirely. The one called El Mirador has concrete steps up the side and a view back over the whole lake.

Agree with the lanchero before you get in that you want Tayasal and not the standard circuit of the zoo, the viewpoint and a swimming spot, or you will get the circuit. Come back for sunset, which the island does very well, and eat on a terrace.

  1. 15:00

    Walk round the island

    Note

    Fifteen minutes at a slow pace, uphill to the plaza and down the other side. Do it once on arrival and you will not need a map again.

  2. 16:00

    Tayasal

    Historic

    A short boat from the north shore. Insist on the ruins rather than the tour, and have the boatman walk you to the pyramids.

  3. 19:00

    El Zotz

    Eat

    A plain breakfast and lunch place on the island. Try the licuada maya, which is pineapple blended with greens and better than that sounds.

With more time: If the boat does not appeal on the first afternoon, the plaza at the top of the island fills up in the early evening and the terraces on the west shore have the sunset. Book the next day's Tikal shuttle at any agency on the way past.

Day 2 in Flores (Guatemala)

A full day at Tikal

Give Tikal the whole day. The site covers several square kilometres of forest with causeways between the groups, so the walking is real and the distances between one plaza and the next are ten or twenty minutes under a canopy full of noise: howler monkeys, spider monkeys, oropendolas, and toucans that turn out to be much larger than expected. Two hundred metres of forest is all it takes to lose every other person in the park.

The Great Plaza is the centre and the photograph. Temple I and Temple II face each other across a lawn of cut grass with the North Acropolis stacked up on one side, a platform rebuilt on top of itself over and over for a thousand years, with masks of the gods still visible on the earlier layers underneath. You cannot climb the stone steps of the temples themselves, but Temple II has a wooden staircase up the back to a deck level with the roof of the plaza.

Then Temple IV, at the western edge, which is the tallest thing here and stands on higher ground as well. The wooden stairs up the side are steep and worth every step: at the top you are above the canopy, looking out over unbroken green with the roof combs of three other temples pushing through it and nothing else in any direction. This is the view used in the original Star Wars, with rebel ships coming in low over the jungle moon of Yavin IV. Finish at Mundo Perdido on the way back, the great Preclassic complex, whose pyramid you are allowed to climb to the very top.

  1. 08:00

    Tikal

    Historic

    About an hour and a half each way by shuttle. Buy the foreigner ticket at the gate, take lunch in, and plan on being inside for six hours.

  2. 10:00

    Great Plaza

    Architecture

    The heart of the site. Climb the wooden stair behind Temple II for the view down onto it, then sit at the edge for a while.

  3. 13:00

    Temple IV

    Other

    The tallest at Tikal, twenty minutes west along a forest causeway, with wooden stairs to a platform above the canopy.

  4. 15:00

    Mundo Perdido

    Architecture

    The Preclassic ceremonial group, and the biggest structure in the park you can stand on the top of. Late afternoon light is the best of it.

With more time: The Central Acropolis beside the Great Plaza is a warren of small courtyards and rooms that most groups walk past, and it is the only part of Tikal that gives you a sense of people living rather than worshipping. The small museum by the entrance holds the stelae and the burial goods.

Day 3 in Flores (Guatemala)

A cave under Santa Elena, and sunset at Yaxhá

Ak'tun Kan is ten minutes south of the causeway on the edge of Santa Elena, and it is a proper cave rather than a show cave: a guide, a torch, low passages and chambers full of stalactites and flowstone. The formations have names, in Spanish, and the guide will point out the ones that look like animals and people whether or not you can see it. The whole thing takes an hour and costs very little.

Then go east for the afternoon. Yaxhá sits on a ridge between two lagoons about ninety minutes away, near the Belize border, and it is a substantial Maya city in its own right, with plazas, ball courts, causeways and several hundred structures, cleared and consolidated but never rebuilt to the standard of Tikal. It is also almost empty, which after yesterday is the point of going.

The reason tours leave in the early afternoon is the pyramid at the eastern edge of the site. From the top of it you look west over the Yaxhá lagoon with the forest running out flat in every direction, and the sun goes down into the water. Howler monkeys start up somewhere below as the light goes, and it is a genuinely alarming noise the first time you hear it.

  1. 09:00

    Ak'tun Kan

    Visit

    A short tuk-tuk from the causeway. Guide included, an hour underground, and the labelling is Spanish only.

  2. 13:00

    Yaxhá

    Historic

    Around ninety minutes each way. Afternoon departures are timed for the sunset from the top of the site, so take a torch for the walk back to the van.

With more time: If a second big site appeals more than a cave, Nakum and Uaxactún are both full-day trips arranged through the agencies on the island, on rough roads and with far fewer visitors than Yaxhá.

Day 4 in Flores (Guatemala)

The lake, and a last boat

Keep the last morning on the water. A ten-minute boat from behind the hotels on the north shore reaches Petencito, a small zoo that doubles as a home for animals taken in by the wildlife rescue organisation ARCAS: monkeys, jaguars, raccoons, macaws, most of them confiscated from the illegal pet trade and not releasable. It is modest and it is the closest you will get to seeing what is actually living in the forest you walked through yesterday.

Back on the island, spend what is left on a terrace. The lake is calm in the mornings, the swimming off the piers is good if you can swim, and the market in Santa Elena is ten minutes away across the causeway if you want to buy something before the flight.

The airport is five minutes from the causeway, which makes this the least stressful departure in Guatemala. Flights to the capital are frequently delayed, so do not book a tight connection on the other end.

  1. 08:30

    Petencito Zoo

    Visit

    Ten minutes by boat from behind Hotel Santana, and about an hour on site. Small, cheap and better than it sounds.

  2. 11:00

    Breakfast on the water

    Eat

    Almost every hotel on the shoreline serves breakfast on a terrace over the lake, and it is the thing people remember about Flores.

With more time: With a later flight, boats go across to the villages of San Miguel and San José on the far shore, where the lake is quieter and the swimming is better than anywhere on the island side.

Before you go

Getting in and out

Mundo Maya International, on the edge of Santa Elena, is Guatemala's only other international airport. TAG and Avianca fly in from Guatemala City in about an hour, daily and three times a week respectively, and delays in both directions are normal rather than exceptional. A taxi from the terminal to the island costs about Q20 and takes five minutes.

Overnight buses from Guatemala City take eight to nine hours and arrive at the new terminal a kilometre and a half south of the causeway, where a tuk-tuk to the island is Q15. The better companies run reclining seats and it is a genuinely reasonable way to travel if you can sleep sitting up.

Belize City is a long day east by bus, with a border crossing at Melchor de Mencos, and there are onward connections to the cayes. Westwards, a bus to the Usumacinta river and a boat across gets you into Mexico for Palenque.

Flores, Santa Elena and San Benito

Three settlements share the lake shore and they are not the same. Flores is the island: quiet, cobbled, walkable, full of small hotels and restaurants built out over the water, and treated by locals as somewhere crime does not really happen. Santa Elena, across the causeway, is the working town with the banks, the market, the bus terminals and the airport. San Benito beyond it is bigger and rougher.

Stay on the island. It costs a little more and it is the entire point of being here. Ten minutes on foot along the causeway puts you in Santa Elena when you need a cash machine or a bus.

Tuk-tuks are the transport, at Q10 to Q15 for a hop around Flores, Santa Elena or San Benito, more at night or with luggage. Boats leave from the north shore of the island for the peninsula opposite and the villages round the lake, and the price is haggled.

Doing Tikal properly

Shuttles leave the island for the park from about four in the morning for sunrise, and from around eight for the normal run. The drive takes roughly ninety minutes. The foreigner ticket is bought at the gate, sunrise entry costs extra and is a separate permit, and a guide is optional but changes the day, because almost nothing at the site is labelled.

Go early and stay late rather than joining a half-day. The site is enormous, the paths between groups are ten to twenty minutes of forest walking each, and the wildlife is best in the first and last hours. Midday is hot and quiet in the wrong way.

Take more water than seems sensible, insect repellent, and shoes with grip: the wooden staircases up the temples are steep and get slippery in the rain. Food inside the park is limited and expensive, so bring lunch.

Climate, and the lake

The Petén is hot and humid all year. The dry season, roughly December to April, is the comfortable one and the busy one; the rest of the year brings heavy afternoon rain, mud on the site paths, and far fewer people.

The lake level has risen a great deal over the last few decades and there are buildings on the Flores shoreline standing in water, which is not a flood but the new normal. Swimming is popular, and it drops off steeply from the piers, so it is not somewhere to try it if you cannot swim.

Mosquitoes are worst at dusk and at the ruins. Long sleeves in the evening and repellent for the forest are the practical answer, and dengue is present in the region.

Tikal is the reason and it holds up. Standing above the canopy on Temple IV with three roof combs breaking through the green and nothing else built in any direction is the moment people come to the Petén for, and it works because the forest was allowed to keep the rest of the city.

Flores is the surprise. A small island of tiled roofs where a Maya kingdom held out for two centuries after everybody else had fallen, now full of hammocks and boat touts and tables at the waterline, and much more pleasant to spend three nights on than a base camp needs to be. From here the roads run east into Belize, west into Chiapas and south towards the Caribbean coast, and none of them is a bad direction.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is a Tikal sunrise tour worth it?
Only sometimes. It costs an extra permit and a four in the morning start, and in the dry season the forest is usually under mist at dawn so you hear the howler monkeys rather than see a sunrise. What you do get is the site to yourself for two hours. If you are only going once, an ordinary early entry and a late exit gets you more.
How long do I need at Tikal?
A full day. The groups are spread over several square kilometres of forest with twenty minutes of walking between some of them, and the half-day tours cover the Great Plaza and Temple IV and leave. Six hours inside is a comfortable minimum.
Can I climb the pyramids?
Some of them. The stone steps of Temple I and Temple II are closed, but wooden staircases run up the back of Temple II, Temple IV and the pyramid at Mundo Perdido, which is the largest one you can stand on the top of. They are steep and slippery in the wet.
Should I stay on the island or in Santa Elena?
The island, unless you are counting every quetzal. It is prettier, quieter and safer, it has all the restaurants, and Santa Elena is a ten-minute walk over the causeway when you need a bank or a bus.
Fly or take the overnight bus from Guatemala City?
Fly if the budget allows: an hour against eight or nine, and the road is long and dull. The overnight buses are comfortable enough in the better classes and save you a hotel night. Note that the Flores flights are delayed often, so leave slack around an international connection.
Is it safe?
The island is treated as safe by everyone who lives there and walking around at night is normal. Santa Elena warrants ordinary caution, more so after dark. The road to Tikal and the tourist routes are fine, and the usual advice about not travelling remote roads at night still applies.
What else can I reach from here?
Belize by bus and then a ferry to the cayes, Palenque in Mexico by bus and river boat, and Río Dulce and the Caribbean coast to the south. Copy these four days and put the border crossing after them, because Flores is where all three roads start.