Flores

Like most people who pass through Flores, we used the town as a jumping off point for our trip to the ruins of Tikal. It’s a pretty town filled with tropical-colonial style architecture whose city limits are confined to the little island where it sits on Lake Peten Itza. We didn’t know any of this when we first arrived, bleary eyed and confused, stumbling off of the overnight bus from Guatemala City. It was still dark and the entire town was shut down. The only lights we saw were on the inside of tourist buses packed with early risers heading to Tikal and we decided the thing to do was find a spot to sit and wait for the sunrise.

View from our hotel.

Overnight we had gone from the cold highlands to a hot and humid jungle and even though the temperature felt amazing it still took us a little while to get used to. We spent the day walking around the circumference of the island a few times, eating great street food, and ordering really cheap beers at a seedy bar. Our hotel had a great view of the water and the town was so relaxing that the time just seemed to fly by.

One of the streets.

The next morning we left everything we didn’t need in the hotel’s storage room and took a shuttle to Tikal.