Isla de Flores & Tikal

We got up on time to make it to the opening of the border at 9 am and could go straight to the Banjército. They told us to get two copies of the passport which we could at a nearby booth for 10 pesos. Buuut we had already exchanged out last Mexican pesos and the Guatemalan Quetzal were too much 😬 Luckily I still had 5 US Dollar which we used for our copies and also of another one in the same situation. Antonio, a super nice guy from Honduras and traveling with his dad, was really grateful.
Unfortunately the lady working there insisted that we would need to show the car directly as she needs to take some pictures... No one had told us that yesterday, so we walked back to the hotel and drove through the Guatemalan border station back to the Mexican one. On the way explaining to everyone that we just need to cancel the Temporary import permit and that we don't want to enter Mexico 😅 After about half an hour more we were back on our way into Guatemala. Our next stop was about three hours away so we were curious how the roads would hold up. And we were positively surprised by the state and hereby also the lowered amount of Topes 😁

Flores was our first stop in a bigger city. We needed to get some cash because paying by credit card isn't very common overall. Finding an ATM also turned out harder than expected because there aren't many and not in every bank is one 🙈 Eventually we were successful and then drove to the Isla de Flores, a pueblo pintoresco (the Guatemalan equivalent to a pueblo mágico). And it was a really colourful welcoming into the village, we parked right at the Malecón and then explored the small island by foot. Each little house was painted in a different shining colour and it was fun walking through the small alleys with a little bit of shade protecting from the heat. A nice, cool maracuja juice helped as well 🍹 But we still wanted to continue driving a little bit further to the famous Mayan ruins of Tikal that we were pretty excited about!

The drive was uneventful and we arrived at the entrance shortly after 3pm. From there it was a 20km drive through the National Park and by a lot of warning signs of wildlife 😍 to Tikal and right after parking we encountered a huge group of incredibly cute Coatis 🥰 There were also turkeys and a local pheasant species.
But we wanted to go somewhere else, so we continued then another 25km further North for the night, a town named Uaxatun. The drive to get there was unexpectedly pretty horrible 😅 But we managed to make it before nightfall and explored one group of ruins. The ruins there are more in their original state and we were completely by ourselves, except for a aggressive group of mosquitoes sucking us dry 🧛‍♂️🦟

The town was super small and even if we wanted we couldn't go back to Tikal as the gate is locked at 6pm. So we were glad to find a small comedor open and willing to prepare us something. Just like yesterday there was no menu and we got what they had, which was once again super tasty! For the night we drove a bit into the jungle to a parking of one of the ruin complexes. Even though it was out of town, it was loud with the nightly noises of the jungle 🐒🙊Read more