If you find yourself in Guatemala or Belize and are interested in Mayan ruins, Tikal National Park in Guatemala is the place to visit. While it's easier to reach from Belize, I don't at all regret adding on the extra travel time to visit while we were in Guatemala. Plus you get to see the adorable town of Flores!
Flores is a quick one hour flight from Guatemala City. Tag Airlines runs direct flights multiple times a day. Don't hesitate to fly with them - they're a nice airline and pass out peach juiceboxes (!).
We chose to leave our luggage in Antigua since we were only going for two days. You're allowed a personal item on Tag (we had backpacks), but I read that they charge by the pound for excess luggage, so we thought it best to leave our suitcases behind at our last hostel.
From there, it's another hour by shuttle to Tikal. While you could do a day trip, we really enjoyed staying overnight, and that's the best way to take advantage of the sunset or sunrise tours. Jungle Lodge runs their own shuttle which is an inexpensive round trip, and you can choose pickup at the airport or in town. Since we landed at 2 and our shuttle wouldn't be until after 4, we took a cab into Flores to explore while we waited.
Flores town is literally right next to the airport, so it's only a 5 minute drive or a 20ish minute walk. There are also tuk tuks all around town, which is what we took back to the airport when we left. Most of the hotels are on Isla de Flores, which is a tiny island on the lake just north of the city across a bridge. It only takes about 20 minutes to walk its full perimeter.
Flores is wildly colorful, the buildings all candy colored in blues, greens, corals, and yellows. The calm lake spreads all around it with palm trees lining the water. I also don't know if it was due to the time of year, the day of week (weekday), or the political unrest happening while we were in the country, but the streets were so quiet. It felt like we mostly had the town to ourselves.
I mean, it looks like somebody drew this town with crayons.
After Vietnamese iced coffees in a very pink cafe to kill some time, our shuttle picked us up in town to take us to Tikal. It was an hour's ride there, and by the time we got to the park entrance, we were driving through the jungle in the dark. The lights of the Jungle Lodge were a welcoming sight in the midst of all the trees at night, and we were given our monkey key to room 39.
You can book Jungle Lodge two ways - either the 'hotel' or the 'hostel', but they're the same place even if they come up separately on booking sites. The only difference is that the hostel rooms don't have ensuite bathrooms, but the huge gap in pricing made that an easy sacrifice. The hostel rooms were located in a building adjacent to reception, with the bathroom building in between, all connected by a long porch.
The room itself is simple but nice, with a mosquito net around the bed, bedside tables, and plenty of shelf space for belongings. This made it easy to organize the items we'd need for our early sunrise tour wakeup without fumbling around in the dark.
The main reception area also has a restaurant where we had dinner after arrival. The food was passable, and they had a decent cocktail list.
One thing to be aware of is the hours for electricity. I believe they kept power on until 11 PM before turning it off for the night, and then it wasn't back on until 6 AM, well after we had left for our morning tour. The main inconveniences I had anticipated didn't even end up being an issue. We charged all our devices before bed and just had to use flashlights when we got up in the morning, even though I will say my midnight run to the bathroom with no contacts in and only a flashlight to try to see spiders and other critters was somewhat paranoia-inducing.
What did end up being an unforeseen consequence was the overhead fan shutting off in the middle of the night. After my inconvenient need to pee in the pitch dark, I was sweating too much in bed to fall asleep again. Add a howler monkey waking up in the dead of night and sounding like a jaguar right outside our door, and I think I probably only drifted off for another hour before our alarms were jingling and a 3:30 AM courtesy knock was sounding on our door.
Luckily, lights were still on above the reception desk, and they had out free coffee to help us gear up for this pre-dawn trek through the jungle. I had two cups and could have used two more.
There were only four of us on the sunrise tour - Mat, myself, and an elderly Californian couple - plus our guide, Fernando. He was a studied anthropologist, and it showed in everything he told us about the history of Tikal. He stopped us along the path frequently as we walked to shine his flashlight at the constellations, show us cool trees, or point out any wildlife in the dark, including frogs, toads, and a line of ants carrying huge chunks of leaves. To add to this, we later found out that he had actually grown up in the park! There used to be a Mayan village in Tikal until they were all forced to move because nobody is allowed to live on national park land.
We reached the main temple square with plenty of time before sunrise, and he told us to climb the stairs in the back that would lead to the top, stay quiet up there, and he'd meet us after the sun was up. There were other groups up there, maybe a dozen people total, and thankfully they enforced this rule. The older couple we were with kept loudly whispering to each other until someone came over and told them to shush. The silence really added to the experience of standing on top of this temple as the sky lightened.
While it was too foggy for a great view, the highlight here was really listening to the jungle wake up. Once one howler monkey started roaring, the rest of them all joined in throughout the whole park. It was a cacaphony of the most terrifying sounds all through the trees. I pity whatever ancient people first stumbled through the jungle fearing the monsters who made that noise before finding out they were just cute little monkeys.
The birds also woke up, and we saw toucans before we even left the temple top. My favorite part of the day really was the nature.
Fernando gave us a whole lot of history as we walked through the temple ruins. Tikal is huge. This is easily my favorite Mayan site I've visited due to the location, the amount of temples scattered through this awesome jungle setting, and the lack of a crowd (or at least, the lack of a crowd at 6 AM - the time the park officially opens unless you have a sunrise pass).
Also, the spider monkeys! I saw so many of them. I felt a little bad that I kept ignoring Fernando's history lessons to stare up into the trees and photograph the monkeys swinging around above us. There was a whole group of them that followed us on the path back to the lodge from the treetops.
Our Tikal tour ended back at the main square where we'd been for sunrise, now fully illuminated and ready for photos. There were parrots in the trees nearby as well.
On the walk back, Fernando took us through a childhood shortcut that had us hopping over logs, brushing aside leaves, and passing abandoned cars and the site of his old school. Very cool. We booked this tour through Jungle Lodge, and if our experience is indicative of all their tours, I would recommend doing the same.
We had breakfast at the lodge when we returned, then I immediately crashed back in bed until checkout time despite having just had another cup of coffee. There was still time when we woke up for a quick swim before catching the shuttle back to Flores.
We spent one more night in town before flying out, and we stayed at Los Amigos hostel in Flores. This automatically went on my list of all-time favorite hostels. It was so cool. The whole place is so colorful, just like the town, and it has tons of eclectic light fixtures, awesome murals, and funky little details that make it fun just to walk around and look at.
There's a turtle pond next to the bar, cats on the premises (one of whom we had dinner with), a great food and drink menu, and trees growing right in the middle of the common areas.
The part opposite the bar/restaurant side has a pool table, second bar, hammocks, and a hot tub.
Our private room on the upper floor was super nice too with tons of space, a couch area, and a pretty tapestry behind the bed.
We both would have extended our time at Los Amigos for another night if our luggage wasn't waiting in Antigua. All of our plans had fallen apart anyway due to political protests and roadblocks, but that's a story for next time when I explain how we spontaneously ended up in Mexico City. Flores & Tikal happened to be the end of our too short trip to Guatemala, but I'm glad we fit this in, and we'll absolutely be back in the country to tie up loose ends in the future.
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