- To visit the mayan site of Tikal it is best to stay in Flores. The bus will drop you off at Santa Elena and you will have to catch a tuk tuk or taxi to Flores, a 5 minute ride which cost 20 local currency.
- We stayed at Los Amigos hostel, which has a good vibe and also a good tour agency. Although there are plenty of other places to stay in Flores
- Flores has a wide range of restaurants. There is only one cash point which is the supermarket located on the second street opposite the lake.
- The day tour to the Tikal ruins is great, there are a couple of options, sunrise and sunset, and both have great reviews. The cost for the tour is around 150 quetzals and another 150 for the entrance. It is slightly more for the sunrise.
- Flores there is not much else to do, other than swim in the lake and relax.
- Los Amigos can arrange bus tickets out of Flores for reasonable prices, although there are many tour companies offering so it is possible to get a better deal if you have time.
- If you are heading to Semuc Champey, Los Amigos will book you a bed at Zephyr lodge hoste (which is one of the best hostels we have stayed at) as it is very difficult to get a reservation.
Stepping into the lives of the Mayan people
After a horrendous journey on a very local bus, where the driver decided to play his crappy music at top volume whilst the whole bus tried to sleep, we landed in Santa Elena where we caught a taxi to our Los Amigos Hostel. As it was early, around 6am, the room wasn´t ready however we took advantage of the hammocks where we slept until we were awoken to say our bed was ready. Still exhausted we slept in until around 2pm, a first since the beginning of our travels.
Flores is itself is a small island set around a small lake, making it look like a mini lake Zug, not quite as beautiful though. The main reason for coming here is that Tikal, around 50km away, is one of the biggest and well kept sites to see Mayan ruins, dating back as far as the 4th century BC. The site itself was abandoned in around the 10th century and as to why this happened is still a mystery. What was left behind is a series of vast temples, built for the monarchy at the time as tombs, with many other buildings around the site. It has also been classified as the centre of the Mayan empire which spans as far as Mexico and southern Central America, it´s location and size giving it that status.
Amazingly the whole site is now covered in thick jungle, with trees and wildlife completely covering the ruins, only to be found by archaeologists in the middle of the 20th century. Having seen Machu Pichu and the Lost City in Colombia we had no expectation of the site as we hadn't really seen any photographs.
We head off with our group and our guide, a primary teacher turned tour guide briefed us on the rules of his tour and it felt like we were back at school for the day. Very enthusiastically he guides us through a map of all the temples, the dates they were built and the supposed reasons, as we look at the map we
now get an idea of the grandness of this site and
how it must of looked when the site was
completely clear of the dense jungle.
A half an hour later and a lot learnt from our teacher we head off to view the first of the smaller temples. It´s amazing to think that these temples were all built such a long time ago, and their alignment to the suns position is one of the main reasons the Mayans built the temples, with all of the fronts facing north. As we head through the dense forest we come across various wildlife including howler and spider monkeys and various other creepy crawlies.
As we see the first temple we are struck by its size and the sheer man power it must have taken to build these, stone after stone after stone meticulously laid to form the structures, all for the worship and tombs of former kings or queens. This is one of the smaller temples and it still impresses. We head off to temple two and again are surprised by its size and the condition. it was quite easy to imagine the full site full of people.
We head round the further temples with the last the most majestic and highset, at over 70m tall, from the top you can see all the way to Mexico, Belize and the Pacific ocean. Whilst the jungle covers most of the temples you can still see two popping through the tree lines.
Here are some of the pics from our day at the site. The site really is worth a visit.
After a horrendous journey on a very local bus, where the driver decided to play his crappy music at top volume whilst the whole bus tried to sleep, we landed in Santa Elena where we caught a taxi to our Los Amigos Hostel. As it was early, around 6am, the room wasn´t ready however we took advantage of the hammocks where we slept until we were awoken to say our bed was ready. Still exhausted we slept in until around 2pm, a first since the beginning of our travels.
Flores is itself is a small island set around a small lake, making it look like a mini lake Zug, not quite as beautiful though. The main reason for coming here is that Tikal, around 50km away, is one of the biggest and well kept sites to see Mayan ruins, dating back as far as the 4th century BC. The site itself was abandoned in around the 10th century and as to why this happened is still a mystery. What was left behind is a series of vast temples, built for the monarchy at the time as tombs, with many other buildings around the site. It has also been classified as the centre of the Mayan empire which spans as far as Mexico and southern Central America, it´s location and size giving it that status.
 |
| A 3D map of the Tikal ruins |
We head off with our group and our guide, a primary teacher turned tour guide briefed us on the rules of his tour and it felt like we were back at school for the day. Very enthusiastically he guides us through a map of all the temples, the dates they were built and the supposed reasons, as we look at the map we
now get an idea of the grandness of this site and
how it must of looked when the site was
completely clear of the dense jungle.
 |
| Our excellent guide Marcos |
As we see the first temple we are struck by its size and the sheer man power it must have taken to build these, stone after stone after stone meticulously laid to form the structures, all for the worship and tombs of former kings or queens. This is one of the smaller temples and it still impresses. We head off to temple two and again are surprised by its size and the condition. it was quite easy to imagine the full site full of people.
We head round the further temples with the last the most majestic and highset, at over 70m tall, from the top you can see all the way to Mexico, Belize and the Pacific ocean. Whilst the jungle covers most of the temples you can still see two popping through the tree lines.
Here are some of the pics from our day at the site. The site really is worth a visit.
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