Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/sZsY2Zo3YgRpaMKNA
So I got into Flores around 5am from my overnight bus from Antigua, and my hostel was super kind and nice enough to give me a bed to sleep in as an early check in – Los Amigos in Flores is probably one of the coolest hostel setups I’ve seen. Soon after arriving, I took a day trip to see the ruins of Tikal, which were awesome and by far the best ruins I had seen in Latin America up to that point. Was obviously super restored like Chichen Itza, but had a much more isolated setting and in general definitely felt wilder. The various pyramids here were incredible, and the tallest one gave a view above the canopy of a vast jungle around us with the occasional pyramid top popping up. It was actually this view that was shown in Star Wars Episode 4 when they fly into the rebel base. It reminded me a bit of the view of Srirangam temple in Trichy in Tamil Nadu, when looking at it from the cave temple in the city that was on top of a hill. Similar sort of vibe of giant man made towers rising above the lush vegetation around it. And unlike Antigua, which is quite frankly infested with tourists (like the good old days!), Tikal was absolutely empty which was nice. Another cool bonus of Tikal was that we caught sight of a green parrot munching on some fruit and were able to get pretty close to it to observe. Unfortunately the classic scarlet macaws are critically endangered and almost impossible to see in the wild but seeing a green parrot was definitely a nice consolation prize here.
Spent the next couple of days just chilling out and hanging in Flores, which is this small island town in the middle of a river. One day, I went out with a bunch of Canadians (and 1 Alaskan but she’s basically Canadian) and rented kayaks for the day, which was ~$5 USD per person, to just kayak around and day drink. The next day, a bunch of us rented out a boat for the day for a kid in my hostel’s 27th birthday, and we just drank and hung out while going on this really cool rope swing into the water.
After that, we got to the main reason I came to Guatemala – the El Mirador trek. It’s a 6 day trek (they also offer 5 day options which 99% of the people who do this go for) into the jungle to see a bunch of Mayan ruins. It was honestly everything I wanted and then some…I can confidently say that Guatemala is towards the top of countries I have visited (it’s up there with India/China/Cambodia/Jordan/Uganda/Namibia/Russia/Kenya as my absolute favorite countries so far). To have two all time great tour spots in the Acatenango volcano and the El Mirador trek is incredible I think. More Americans really need to visit here as it’s super quick and easy and cheap to visit, and they accept vaccine cards!
So we had a good group of 10 people for our Jungle trek and were able to negotiate a decently good price of 300 USD per person, which was all inclusive – guides, cooks, mules for our bags, tents, sleeping bags, food, water. Honestly great value for 50 USD a day. Honestly I got lucky with having a great group. We had a medical student, a nurse (who was anti vax…what is it with nurses and being anti COVID vax? But she was a cool kid), 3 people fluent in Spanish plus one girl from Valencia so no issues with communication as the guides and cooks only spoke Spanish (they were from the local village just outside the trek start point, Carmelita). Also a random interesting note, but one of the guys in the group was the son of Robert Levinson, who was held hostage by Iran for 14 years before being declared dead last year – he was a really cool dude who has basically been working remote and travelling for the past decade plus. But overall, this was a great group – all we needed was one whiner/moaner and it would have somewhat ruined the experience so it was nice to have 9 other great people. And one of them sprained his ankle on day 2 and the other was battling a fever/soreness/severe dehydration (his hand looked like that of a 90 year old one morning after sweating so much the previous night) for a few days and they still trooped on. I’ve also been slowly getting better at Spanish the past month+ but this trek really helped as all of the guides and cooks only spoke Spanish. Have definitely gotten lucky with two great groups for both my Acatenango hike and now the El Mirador trek.
So while this was a jungle, it was nowhere near as wild and amazing as Bwindi was – that truly was no place for humans. This was much more similar to Kalinzu Forest in Uganda, where I did the Chimpanzee trek – there was always a path to follow in the jungle, but it was still clearly a wild experience with all the birds and monkeys making noises around you. And all the campsites had legit infrastructure – outhouse toilets that dropped to the limestone below, solar powered kitchens for the cooks (they rode on donkeys ahead of us), and a physical concrete platform with a rain cover built in to place our tents under. It was definitely a physically taxing experience – we walked a total of just under 100 miles those 6 days in the suffocating humidity of the jungle (the trees were amazing at keeping us cool from the sunlight though!). We were all covered in sweat and grime and dirt (they offered 1.50 USD showers every night but we all declined), but it was just such a wonderful wonderful experience. On our second to last day we trekked 40 km and it was honestly more difficult than any hike I have ever done (so again, more good practice for Kili!). We also got very lucky in that it rained 3 of the nights (rain during the day would have been beyond miserable) which kept the weather on the cooler side during the day. And also, I somehow gained weight during this whole ordeal because they kept us far beyond simply well nourished. One of the cooks was this 65 year old abuela named Maria who was such an amazing person and honestly reminded me a ton of my grandma.
On day one, we walked ~20 km from the town of Carmelita (which was a 2 to 3 hour drive from Flores) to the first campsite. This was just outside the town of El Tintal, which was the first ruin we saw. Pretty cool site but I didn’t “love” it because it was too overgrown so for a lot of structures all you could see are hills – they hadn’t cleared any of the vegetation out. Personally for me, my ideal ruin side is one where they clear out the vegetation so you can actually see the structure, but also left in a ruined state with trees growing out of it, so not neatly restored like, say, the main Angkor Wat temple or Chichen Itza. And this entire jungle trek experience was 100% the closest I have seen to Cambodia, with the Cambodian highlights (Preah Khan, Koh Ker, Beng Melea, Ta Prohm) obviously a good deal grander. Was actually like a cooler version of the Termessos Roman ruin near Antalya in Turkey.
One of the cool things we saw throughout the trek but most prominently the first day in El Tintal were these local turkeys that were crazy colorful, and we would all refer to them as peacock turkeys. After El Tintal, we did another ~20km trek to El Mirador, which was a massive sight where we spent 1.5 days just exploring (with our guides of course – way too easy to get lost on your own). El Mirador definitely hit the sweet spot I mentioned in the last paragraph, with the ruins all in a “maintained decay” state which I loved. Tons of pyramids to climb here to get great views over the jungle canopy, where you could see birds flying and the sun all the way out in the distance. We did sunset at the tallest discovered Mayan pyramid to date, La Danta, at the edge of the El Mirador sight. From here we actually saw tons of toucans which was really really cool – their beaks are ridiculous, with like 5+ colors on them. The sunsets on this trip were pretty good but don’t compare to my peak sunsets of Namibia or Ladakh (though to be honest Acatenango was pretty close to those two). Also at El Mirador we saw some really well maintained Mayan sculpture/artwork/design, which was really my first time seeing some up close (besides a perfectly preserved Mayan facemask carving in Tikal which was one of the highlights there). Excited to hopefully see more of these in Copan in Honduras.
In general, during our walks, we would run into tons of monkeys. There are two types here – howlers and spider monkeys. The spider monkeys were cheeky little bastards who would literally throw branches at us while we walked because were were encroaching in their territory. Thankfully they had the aim of Carson Wentz but it was honestly hilarious. The howlers on the other hand were craaazy. You need to youtube it but they literally sound like massive monsters – at first I thought their noise was like tons of jaguars roaring (I don’t even know if jaguars roar). Walking back from the pyramids to our campsite after sunset each night was amazing because it would be pitch black (trees blocking out the moon and starlight – speaking of which, not great night skies because it was cloudy every night) and you would hear these monstrous roars of the howler monkeys. Just so so cool. And I saw fireflies for the first time since I was a kid, as they would just pop up here and there every night during these walks…can definitely see how people back in the day would think that fireflies in the woods were spirits. There were also tons and tons of bright blue butterflies fluttering about every day, and we even saw baby jaguar footprints on the second to last day (but sadly no jaguar sighting). But I was happy that I got to see green parrots and toucans and the two different types of monkeys so no wildlife complaints from me. Toucans definitely took the cake – just ridiculously cool looking birds. There is a bird sanctuary near Copan in Honduras and while I typically am against visiting reserves, I might cheat and see that just to see scarlet macaws.
After El Mirador, we did another ~20km walk to the site of Nakbe, which is apparently ~1500 years older than Chichen Itza. It’s also the site of the oldest known ball court for the Mayan ball game (this is a sport that was apparently popular with the Mayans, where the winners got sacrificed to the gods because of course you only offer the cream of the crop). If I was Mayan I would strive for mediocrity – not too good to be sacrificed, but not too bad where I am disposable. The day after Nakbe was the big daddy, with a 40+km slog that took 10 hours. We stopped by this really cool site called Wakna around halfway through, where the only thing cleared to see (the rest being fully under vegetation) was a royal tomb. It straight up looked directly out of Indiana Jones it was so cool. And then ended at La Florida, which had a few more really cool house like structures with trees growing on top of them – this weirdly reminded me of Freya’s house in the newest God of War game on the PS4. And then after La Florida we just trekked back to Carmelita before driving back down to Flores.
That 2nd to last day where we walked 40+km was probably the highlight of the trip for me, along with the actual day we spent roaming around El Mirador. Apparently we were only the 2nd group since COVID to actually take this path (since every other tour group since COVID bar one has been doing the 5 day), and it kind of showed as it was by far the most jungle-y day with the vegetation and barely visible path. Still not quite to the level of Bwindi but was still awesome.
One interesting thing that I was well prepared for after reading The Lost City of the Monkey God a few years back (about a similar lost city found in western Honduras), was when you think lost city or jungle ruins, it’s not like Cambodia or El Mirador where you have structures with trees growing out of them. It’s more like giant hills interspersed through the flat jungle. There is a certain amount of imagination required to visualize the city layout, and this entire area was one large urban sprawl since there were a ridiculous amount of hills that we crossed over the six days, all of which are unexcavated Mayan sites.
So after the trek, had a top 3 shower of my life and chilled in Flores for a day and a half before going back down to Antigua. But Antigua was a nice little place to kick back for a few days – it really is quite atmospheric. While there, I actually ran into some of the Canadians I had met kayaking back in Flores totally unplanned, and we went to this Hobbiton themed eco-park called Hobbitenango (tenango means “place of” in the local Mayan dialect). It was a pretty cool area and definitely glad I went – took a couple of pics and for my organizational purposes added them to the Southern Guatemala album since it was just outside Antigua.
Honestly, more people need to come to Guatemala (I say this about every country I love, like Namibia/Uganda/Jordan/etc.). But it is so easy, and the El Mirador trek was, if possible, even cooler than the Acatenango volcano hike, which in itself was an incredible experience. Honestly pretty excited to eventually do the Macchu Pichu trail and the Lost City trek in Colombia as well, and hopefully discover a few more treks that are like this!
Taking a 12 hour bus that leaves at 3:30am for Copan in Honduras to see the Mayan ruins there – this isn’t supposed to be quite as grand as Tikal but is supposed to have the best preserved carvings and sculptures of any Mayan site. There’s also apparently some cool horseback riding opportunities there and as I mentioned earlier, I might bite the bullet and go to the bird reserve as well. I think the plan after that is just to head up north in Honduras to scuba dive in Utila. My parents are trying to bribe me to come home early with a trip to Iceland, so I’ll either extend Utila for a bit and dive/bum around for a while before going home around May 19 (ideally would like two weekends in NY before going to Tanzania with my sister), find some other things to do in Honduras, meet my new Canadian and Alaskan friends in Nicaragua (would love to do this but time would be suuuper tight), or come home early around May 7, have a couple of weekends in NY then, and then go to Iceland with my family. Will figure it out later but I think I’m leaning towards Nicaragua or extending Honduras for a bit.