Flores and Tikal – An island in a lake in the jungle & some pretty awesome ruins

Flores

Flores is a small man made island in the middle a lake in northern Guatemala. The island is full of cute restaurants and is a good spot to watch the sunset over the lake – although not much else. The main drawcard of the island is its proximity to the ruins of one of the largest Mayan cities – Tikal.

We were expecting bad things from Guatemalan food – a month of rice and beans basically – and our first impressions weren’t promising. We had an afternoon snack of nachos with orange American cheese and Doritos and ate dinner at a “traditional” Mayan restaurant where the food was barely edible due to the copious amounts of salt. However, the food improved as we steered away from Guatemalan food. We had lots of sunset happy-hour drinks overlooking the lake, watching hippies play guitar and talk garbage. Funny! We also had a beautiful meal at Il Terrazo, a cute Italian restaurant with homemade pasta (the 10 Quetzal ($1.40) mojitos may have helped).

Salty Mayan food

Beers by the lake

Sunset

On our last day in Flores we visited an animal rescue centre across the lake called Los Arcos. Arcos rescues animals from poachers and illegal traders and attempts to rehabilitate them and release them back into the wild. A Spanish speaking guide showed us around huge cages of exotic birds, spider monkeys, crocodiles and two Ocelots (the best).

We also visited the town of Santa Ellena, across the short causeway from Flores. It is not a tourist town and was our first glimpse into real Guatemalan life. We wandered around the dusty streets and markets checking out caged chickens, eggs, vegetables and meat. In order to keep the universe in balance we went to Burger King on the way home, which had the best view of any fast food joint we’d ever seen.

Best Burger King view ever!

Tikal

Tikal was one of the largest Mayan cities back in the day before being abandoned around the 10^th century. You enter the ruins along a jungle path which ended up being really awesome as we saw anteaters and monkeys swinging from the trees. Further down the path we saw a jungle rat chowing down on a massive wild turkey which had been killed by a jaguar (exciting!).

The ruins were fantastic.  80% of the site is still under the cover of jungle, and it didn’t feel like a reconstructed tourist park as some smaller, well-tended ruins have in the past.  A lot of the ruins only have their facades cleared of jungle with large trees and shrubs covering the posterior aspects.

As you climb temple 4 (one of the tallest pyramids in the world), you get an awesome view out over the canopy with jungle all the way to the horizon – brilliant. 

On the big pyramid

Cows on the road on the way home