Visiting Tikal: Stepping back in time in guatemala
If you’ve ever dreamed of stepping into an ancient civilization, channeling your inner Indiana Jones, and exploring a lost city swallowed by the jungle, then visiting Tikal in Guatemala is an absolute must. Towering pyramids, howler monkeys, and epic history — Tikal is a destination that will leave you breathless (literally, after climbing Temple IV!).
Listen - I know it’s easy to get what I call “templed out” when traveling through Central America, but I enjoyed Tikal even more than I did Chichen Itza, which is classified as a wonder of the world! I promise you - no matter how many ruins and temples you’ve visited, Tikal is well worth your time, despite it being slightly out of the way of most Guatemala itineraries.
(But at the same time, adding Tikal to your Guatemala itinerary unlocks another world of opportunity - exploring Flores, experiencing Semuc Champey, and more!)
Before we get into it, let’s go over some quick logistics. If you’re planning on visiting Tikal, there’s an important base camp to discuss - Flores, Guatemala! This odd little island town serves as the perfect jumping-off point for your Tikal adventure and offers plenty of fun activities to keep you entertained before and after your temple explorations.
Where to stay in Flores, Guatemala
Flores is a small little island, but it has a surprising amount of lodging options - and has something for every budget.
Budget: For cheap options, I recommend staying in a hostel! Even if you’re traveling with a friend or a significant other and aren’t interested in dorm rooms, there are super affordable private rooms at most hostels in Guatemala and Central America. I personally stayed at Hostel Macarena, but only because I didn’t book Los Amigos in time! Hostel Macarena was nice, with super comfortable beds, free breakfast, and warm showers, but not a very sociable common space. I can’t personally speak for Los Amigos, but I had a few friends stay there and participate in their social activities, and they loved it!
Honestly, I’ve heard good things about all the Flores Hostels so you can’t really go wrong.
Mid Range - High End: Obviously I don’t have a personal recommendation for a hotel in Flores, but because of how small the island is, it’s less than $100 per night to stay in a hotel with a gorgeous water view - all of the options on booking.com look incredible! If you’ve stayed at a hotel in Flores, let me the name of it and what you thought down below!
Without further ado, let’s get into the nitty gritty of planning your adventure, visiting Tikal, and exploring Flores.
visiting Tikal from Flores
Getting to Tikal from Flores is super easy, and you have multiple options depending on your budget and sense of adventure.
Tour Shuttles – The most convenient and popular option is booking a shuttle tour. These typically include round-trip transportation, park entry, and a guide who will bring the ruins to life with historical context. Tours usually leave around 3 AM for the sunrise tour or around 4:30 AM for the regular day trip.
Listen - I KNOW those time slots are absolutely vomit inducing, especially if you’re visiting Guatemala on vacation, but visiting Tikal is an absolute must-do. But, if you want a little insider secret, every single person I talked to dissuaded me from the sunrise tour. Apparently, the jungle is consistently very misty in the mornings, and getting a beautiful sunrise over the main pyramid is super rare.
Sure enough, we talked with a few people at the ruins on the day that we went, and they said they didn’t have much visibility through the mist at all - which made me feel so much better about choosing the tour with the later start (if 4:30 am qualifies as a late start - lol)
Public Bus (Colectivo) – If you’re on a budget, take a colectivo from Santa Elena (just across the bridge from Flores). It’s the cheapest way to get to Tikal, but keep in mind that it will take longer and might not be the most comfortable ride.
Private Taxi – If you prefer flexibility, hire a private driver. This option is pricier but allows you to explore at your own pace.
Rental Car – Renting a car is another great option if you plan to visit multiple sites in the region. The roads to Tikal are well-paved and safe for driving.
To be honest, the tours are super good bang for your buck, and it’s so nice to sit back and have someone else handle the logistics of this day trip; I highly recommend just booking a tour.
Once you arrive at Tikal National Park, get ready for an unforgettable journey back in time!
My day in Tikal:
My tour through Tikal started off with a brief overview of it’s history. Tikal is a collection of pyramids and structures that were built and utilized by the Mayan people from the years 200-900 AD. There are believed to be over 3000 structures on the land, but only a select few have been uncovered!
It’s really interesting to see - when you hike to the top of one of the pyramids, you can see rises and falls in the landscape - that to an unknowing person, would simply look like mountains or hills. This area of Guatemala, however is completely flat, so it’s actually old temples and structures that have been completely swallowed by the jungle.
And what a jungle it is! Our guide was excellent at spotting pointing out all the wildlife. We saw capybaras, white nose coatis, tarantulas, howler monkeys, and toucans! Our guide said that while it’s rare, sometimes you can even see jaguars, and he had seen one the week prior to us! Not to worry - Jaguars are much more afraid of a large group of humans than we are of them.
All photos courtesy of the 25x zoom on my iphone 15 which is not fabulous okay give me a break lol
Our guide gave us so much information about Tikal, but also gave us lots of free time to wander around and take pictures. It’s so crazy to think that thousands of years ago, literal human SACRIFICE was happening at the top of these pyramids. Real life Road to El Dorado.
Unlike Chichen Itza, you can actually climb to the top of one of the pyramids here at Tikal! I was completely uninformed regarding this before I came, and I thought for sure we were going to be able to climb the actual physical steps of either Pyramid 1 or Pyramid 2 - the iconic temples that face each other, but that was not the case.
You’re able to climb to the top of Pyramid 4, and it’s actually up a wooden steps/scaffolding situation (mildly disappointing) - so nix any daydreams of scrambling up massive stone steps.
Here’s a very fun fact about Pyramid 4 and the view you get from it at the top: If Tikal looks familiar, you might recognize it from Star Wars: A New Hope. As a member of a very nerdy family, this was so fun for me to realize. The view from Temple IV was used as the backdrop for the Rebel base on Yavin 4! Idk why when my family travels we always somehow end up seeing filming scenes of nerdy shows (Game of Thrones scenes in Dubrovnik, more Stars Wars scenes in Lake Como, Italy), but this was just another to add to the list. Enjoy the very unaesthetic picture I sent to my family as proof:
One hilarious thing that came of my trip to Tikal was my very first viral TikTok video. The little howler monkeys make the most terrifying noises, so much so that I later learned that howler monkey noises were literally used as the dinosaur sounds in the Jurassic Park movies ??? Who knew.
Anyways, I was filming myself walking through the jungle (with our guide and the rest of our group), trying to capture the sounds so that I could send a glimpse of it back to my family. I ended up quickly uploading the video to TikTok with no thought, but the sounds were genuinely so terrifying that tens of thousands of people were commenting, telling me to run, to check in if I was still alive, and overall being very concerned for my life!
It’s so crazy how such a small little monkey can make such a big, scary sound - but shoutout to the howler monkeys for my first viral video I guess - lol
My time visiting Tikal was so much fun! We got a little bit of a rain shower in the afternoon but it cleared up within the hour, and it’s not like we were looking particularly glamorous anyways. After seeing ruins in multiple different Latin American countries, I can confidently say that for me personally, Tikal takes the cake and is something you should 100% add to your Guatemala or Central America itinerary.
Other Things to Do in Flores, Guatemala
After an epic day of exploring Tikal, you’ll be happy to return to Flores, a picturesque island town on Lake Petén Itzá. My tour got back to town by 3:30 p.m. (lol ONLY - as if it wasn’t just an 11 hour day), and I imagine that if you opted for the earlier sunrise tour, that you would be home shortly after lunch!
You have two options when you get back from visiting Tikal: First, you can either grab a little ice cream and crash at the hotel. If this is the one you choose I do NOT blame you, but if you’re short on time and are really only in Flores because of it’s proximity to Tikal, then you should make the most of the rest of your day and SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD. YOLO people. Keep it moving.
Luckily Flores has an abundance of things to do; here were my favorites.
1. Tacos by the basketball court
But first things first - food. There are plenty of gorgeous little restaurants with excellent views of the Lake, and I’ll get to one of my favorites a little further in the post, but the one thing that managed to pick me back up and put a second wind in my sails was 3 little tacos from the stand by the basketball court. I don’t have an exact name for you (as I’m sure there really isn’t one) but the tacos are banging and made to order and cost 50c a piece. 10 minutes and $1.50 later, I was a new woman and ready to take on the rest of the day.
2. Jorge’s Rope Swing
If it’s a nice, hot day, take a little lancha (small boat) across the way to Jorge’s Rope Swing. This little swimming spot is technically the home of a local family, but they’ve marketed their rope swings and jumping platforms to tourists, and boy has it been successful. The one free day I had in Flores was actually 50 degrees Fahrenheit, (10 degrees Celsius) so entirely too cold to go swimming, but check out some photos of Jorge’s Rope Swing HERE, and if that doesn’t look like a good time, I don’t know what does.
3. Boat Parties on Lake Petén Itzá
Additionally, if you have a warm, sunny day, you can join a Los Amigos boat party! Los Amigos is a popular hostel on the island, and they host weekly lake parties. They’re just on a little pontoon boat, but a few of my friends were in Flores on a warmer day and their pictures and videos looked so cute, with neon inner-tubes, cold beer, and fun music. If you’re interested, have a wander into Los Amigos and ask when the next boat party is!
4. Explore Flores
Flores is, without a doubt, one of the most colorful little towns I’ve ever been to! Every building is a different color, and it’s so much fun because it’s just not something that you would typically see in America. I loved wandering around and getting lost, peeking down little alleyways that led to the lake, and just taking in all the color!
I would definitely recommend just taking a lap when you first arrive in Flores to get a feel for the island and appreciate the charm.
5. Megapaca
… This is going to be a very hit or miss point on this list of things to do in Flores - but since it’s such a small island with limited options, I’m going to list it.
As we all know, there’s a real problem with fast fashion and overconsumption in not only America, but a lot of Europe and other, more developed countries. What you might not know, however, is that the majority of that waste gets shipped to countries like Vietnam or Guatemala, where it’s then sold on the streets (or in giant mega thrift stores - looking at you Megapaca) for super cheap. And I mean SUPER cheap. Although Megapaca isn’t quite ON the island of Flores, it IS about a 20 minute Tuktuk ride into the mainland, but who doesn’t love riding in a Tuktuk?
Megapaca is the biggest thrift store I have ever been to, period. There were brands like Free People, Levis, H&M, Princess Polly and more - I even managed to find a T-shirt from the university I went to ???? A small school in Newport News? Okay Megapaca???
As a backpacker, this was a dangerous activity. 4 floors of pre-loved clothes for pennies? Our already-stuffed backpacks were bursting at the seams by the time we left Flores. One fun thing that made this stand out to me was the amount of times I would ask a backpacking girlie where she got her top, and she would look at me with wide eyes and exclaim “It’s Megapaca!” and the response was always, “OMG slayyyy Megapaca!”
And there were many Megapaca slays along the Central America Backpacking trail. I will tell you that much.
6. Kayaking on the Lake
If you’re more into nature than you are thrifting, you can always go for a little kayak on the lake! This is a great way to get out onto the lake even if it is a little too chilly for Jorge’s rope swing, and one activity I really considered doing. However when I was there, it was not only in the 50’s (Fahrenheit), but it was also extremely windy - and those waves were not exactly welcoming. If you have better weather than me (I was there in February!) you may have better luck with the lake.
7. find a sweet treat
One thing I loved about Flores was the abundance of ice cream shops and bakeries! When I got back from my Tikal tour (after devouring those street tacos) I grabbed a little almond croissant from a corner bakery and went and sat on a bench with a beautiful view of the lake. Something so simple, but still one of my favorite things I did while in Flores.
8. Eat at Maracuya
While there are plenty of delicious restaurants in Flores, one of my favorites was Maracuya! Not only is the walk to the restaurant so picturesque, (and somewhere you would never find if you weren’t following google maps) but the inside is also absolutely stunning - AS IS the rooftop terrace/butterfly garden! The menu ranges from traditional Guatemalan dishes to Vegan smoothie bowl and even to Pad Thai - so no matter who’s in your group, there’s something for everyone.
I mean - just LOOK at the rooftop terrace!
Final Thoughts on Visiting Tikal and Flores, Guatemala
Visiting Tikal is an absolutely incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience that will transport you back to the days of the ancient Maya. Pair it with a stay in Flores, and you’ve got the perfect mix of adventure, relaxation, and cultural exploration. Whether you're climbing the pyramids of Tikal, swinging into the lake at Jorge’s Rope Swing, or enjoying a sunset boat ride, this region of Guatemala is sure to leave you with unforgettable memories.
Stay tuned for a full Guatemala itinerary that will help you piece together the perfect trip, one that includes all the classic Guatemalan cities and sights, but also the more out-of-the-way wonders such as tikal.
