Incredible Wildlife and Ruins at Tikal

From San Ignacio in Belize our next stop was Flores in Northern Guatemala. Once again we waited at the bus stop for over an hour to get a bus to the border town of Benque, then hopped in a short taxi ride to the actual border. Entering Guatemala had to be one of the easiest border crossings we’ve ever done! We literally handed in the passport and got a stamp for 90 days. No forms needed filling, no declarations, no fingerprints, they didn’t even scan our passports 🤣 within 10 seconds we were in!

But now the hard part was the travel to Flores without getting mugged off! Lots of taxis were waiting for us on the other side. But we kept walking into the town of Melchor. Here, we got money from an ATM in town, the local currency is called Queztales, named after the National bird, the beautiful resplendent Queztal.

With our fresh Quetzals in hand we jumped in a local colectivo heading for Flores for just Q40 each (about £4), although we did have to wait a while whilst the driver drove around the town looking for more people to pick up. He drove through the streets of Melchor with the window down shouting “FLOOORES, FLOOOOOORRREEEESSS!!” We found a couple more, but the van was pretty empty so we headed off. The journey took about 3 hours down bumpy and potholed road towards Flores, and we stopped a few times along the way to drop off or pick up more people.

We arrived in Flores town, and then made our way via tuktuk (for Q20) to Flores Island, which is on lake Peten Itza, but connected via a land bridge.

Flores Island is a beautiful town, very well geared for tourism and firmly on the gringo trail through central America. The quaint cobbled streets have brightly coloured houses and swanky breakfast and coffee shops, and are full of hostels, guesthouses and boutique hotels. But it is very nice. It looks like there used to be Malécon around the whole island, but it’s all underwater now… In fact the lake comes right up to the buildings on the front, reminding us of Venice…

We walked around the town taking in the beautiful streets, eating some street food and sweating a lot! It was still super hot here like San Ignacio!

We were only here one night though. Flores is the base/gateway town to visit the Maya ruins of Tikal. And most people here book a tour from Flores – which includes transport to and from Tikal (which is about 2 hours away driving) and a guide….

But there’s nothing I hate more than a tour bus and tour group(!), plus, I’d read that the Biotope of Tikal was also one of the best places in Central America to see wildlife, including the Keel-billed Toucans I was really desperate to see on this trip.

So the best time for birding is early morning dawn or late at dusk, and the majority of the tours from Tikal get there 8am at the earliest and are leaving by 3pm, so not ideal for birding… That meant we’d have to book one of the more expensive sunrise or sunset tours, which are mandatory to have a guide…

So in the end, the best option for us seemed to be to stay 2 nights inside Tikal, instead of Flores. This would mean we could buy a standard day ticket for just Q150 each, which allows us entry from 6am-6pm.

So we could wake up in the park and be there for 6am dawn birds and stay as long as we want until 6pm dusk, without having to worry about tour groups, being rushed, getting there or back, and generally just have a chill nature/Maya-focused day.

We booked to stay in the Jungle lodge hotel and hostel Tikal, in one of the “hostel” rooms, which was a nice room, just sharing a (very nice) bathroom.

We just had to get there first from Flores, which should be simple enough. Again, not one to be a “tourist”, we took a tuktuk with our bags to the Santa Elena bus terminal and tried to get a public colectivo heading to Tikal. However, it was Sunday and we were told when we arrived that Sunday is a bit… Well… Unpredictable. They said yes usually colectivos go from here almost every hour, but on Sunday, they might go, or they might not… 😂 I guess because the country is still very Christian, Sundays are a bit more conservative…

We waited a bit but nothing seemed to be happening, so I started frantically trying to find an alternative way there. I contacted a few places offering sunset tours (return transport and guide etc) but asked them if we could just get a one way ride in the van, as the tourist colectivos only seem to go in the morning. One company agreed and I managed to negotiate the price a bit, but not much… So we ended up on a tour bus in the end anyway 🤣🤣 luckily only for the ride there!!

We finally arrived at the jungle lodge, which was really cool, deep in the Guatemalan rainforest and fortunately it was also much much ‘cooler’ (in temperature) than in Flores too! In fact, the clouds started drawing in not long after we arrived and just before sunset the heavens opened in a huge thunderstorm. I felt a bit sorry for all the other people on our bus who were currently doing the sunset tour…

We sat on our porch and enjoyed the thunderstorm, then in a break in the rains Dave spotted some birds, “what’s that, it looks like a toucan?!”. They were collared Aracaris, and everyone in the hostel was impressed with my bird knowledge haha! 😎 I’d seen a lot of different Aracaris in Ecuador so remembered them. These ones were very beautiful, and we watched them through the binoculars feeding in the trees before the rains chased them away again.

We also saw chachalacas and mealy (green) parrots from our porch too. So we were already super happy with the decision to stay in the park!

We got an early night ready to get up first thing… The rains continued almost all night, and it was still raining when we woke up at 5:30am… So we waited a little, but by 6am it had stopped, so we got ready really quickly and headed to the park with the tickets we’d bought online.

Right by the ticket check point were loads of Coatis (like a cute raccoon with long erect tails!), and a couple of Agoutis (like big guinea pigs) too.

We had a route mapped out ready to walk. We didn’t want to just go to the main tourist hotspots, because we wanted to see wildlife too, and at this time it was perfect. The rains had stopped, but the trails were still misty with fog which added to the ambiance of the place. The first few trails and temple complexes we visited we didn’t see a single other soul, which made us feel like we were intrepid explorers, discovering Tikal for the first time. Especially since the first complex we visited was “Group G” which seems to just appear out of the jungle. Covered in moss, soil and plants.

From here we walked towards the Gran Plaza with Temples I and II, there were finally some other people here, but not many, we climbed the temples in peace, listening to the birds. Here we saw lots of Montezuma’s Oropendolas, a funny looking big bird with an orange beak and yellow tail. They have the maddest sounding vocalisations, like robotic bubbling and crazy sounds. They were building nests in the trees and a male was doing this display where he rocks forward and basically goes upside down hanging from the branch, all whilst doing the mad noise!! There were also TONNES of green parrots everywhere!

We continued on, and walked past Temple III then towards temple IV, we saw the ocellated Turkey, a turkey “on acid” haha with so many iridescent colours and orange nodules on its head, then I heard “knock knock knock” woodpeckers somewhere, we saw 3 in the trees, with bright red punk rocker hair dos!

We reached Temple IV which is the furthest from the entrance and also the tallest. We climbed the walk ways and on the way up saw the slaty tailed trogon (didn’t manage to take a pic before I lost it), little black and white warblers, loads of tityras (which are apparently quite rare) and so many other birds I didn’t even know what they were…

We made it to the top and were treated to spectacular views back across the whole site. From here you can see the tops of the other main temples poking up through the trees.

Then… “Lib! Lib! TOUCAN!!”. I was looking through the binoculars focused on the Tityras, I had missed them, luckily Dave was eagle eyed. We didn’t have chance to take a pic here, but I got a great look through the binoculars as they landed in a tree close by before continuing on.

What a day so far and we were only 2 hours in haha!!

From here, we walked the lost world trail towards “the lost world” and climbed all the temples here, including the main big one, again, you could see all the others from the top. You could also see a blossoming tree from here, quite close, in full bloom with red flowers. It was FULL of birds, so many, it was just about too far to take any unblurred photos, but I saw about 10 different species here, my favourite was the Red-legged honeycreeper, with it’s bright blue hat!!

Then we saw more Toucans flying!!! They landed in a tree quite close. Well, close enough to see with binoculars. Finally, carrying them in my backpack for the last 4 weeks was worth it 🤣 More and more toucans turned up, and we saw about 8, all in pairs flying and landing in various trees around the temple. From our high vantage point on top of the temple we had a perfect view of the canopy. We stayed here a while!

Once the toucans seemed to have moved on and we’d not seen one in a bit, we continued towards the plaza of the seven temples. Here we heard (then briefly saw) the black howler monkeys for the first time. They were very easy to hear, as they are extremely loud, a spooky dinosaur sounding call, but they are relatively hard to see as they stay right in the tree tops and are constantly on the move. Then we saw a big troop of spider monkeys, a hawk (which we later identified as a roadside hawk) and some other cool birds.

The seven temples were cool, and there were 3 ball courts here too, which is very unique in all Maya sites apparently!

We continued on towards Temple V, the biggest of all of them and still being uncovered and restored. We saw another couple of howler monkeys in the trees here too. Then we circled back towards the gran plaza along a cool trail under the trees, coming out at the acropolis area.

By this time it was about 12:30pm meaning we’d been walking around the park for 6 hours. We’d walked about 15 km and were in serious need of some lunch, so headed back out of the park to the hotel via complex Q and R.

After a brief pit stop and refuel, we headed back into the park, we’d taken the “middle” path in, the “right” path out, so this time we took the “left” path in. We saw an Agouti in the path, which felt more authentic as seeing one outside the gift shop! 🤣 Then we came to Temple VI, we’d now seen them all!

We took the Mendez trail back towards the main centre of the park and stopped off at group F, where we saw a grey fox, quite a rare mammal to see here!

Then we took the Aguada trail past complex O when we heard the LOUDEST howler monkeys we’d heard, they were screaming right on top of us. It was such a crazy sound, it’s like screaming and if you didn’t know that it was actually a gentle and shy monkey making that noise, you’d be terrified by the sounds!

We followed them from the canopy floor as they moved through the trees where we could (whilst they moved close to the path). Then they eventually moved somewhere we couldn’t follow. Unfortunately, although we got some great videos, I don’t have any good pics…

This path from complex O was our favourite and we only saw one other small group on it the whole time. It eventually led us back to Temple IV, but we decided to camp out again on the Lost World complex to try and spot the toucans again. We didn’t see any toucans here and by this time it was getting close to 5pm. We needed to be out of the park by 6pm… So we started heading back, and decided via the gran plaza one last time.

We got here just after 5pm as the light was starting the fade. It had been cloudy all day really with no real sun, which in a way was a godsend, since it kept the park nice and cool and there was no risk of burning with the cloud and the shade of the trees. But it also meant the sunset wasn’t anything to write home about. We stayed to see if anything would happen, watching the Montezuma birds and the parrots around Temples I and II. And then…. Loads of toucans showed up right at the end. Croaking like frogs and settling in the trees. It was amazing and we actually got to see them really close. I didn’t bother trying to get a blurry pic on my phone and instead enjoyed watching them through the binocs. They are incredible colours – like the perfect “classic toucan”! They are so funny too, they look like they should be clumsy with their big beaks, but actually they are quite graceful 😊

What a wonderful end to a perfect day!

We headed back and we were out of the park by 5:55pm, perfect. In at 6:30am and out at 5:55pm!! It was a long, but incredible day!

Tikal has to be up there with one of the best ancient sites I’ve EVER visited, even compared to say Angkor Wat, Borobodur, Bagan because, not only is there incredible history here, with lots of intrigue – i.e. The Maya culture is so fascinating, and we haven’t even fully deciphered the language yet, or completely understand how they built these huge temple complexes 1000+ years ago. These temples here at Tikal are super impressive, some of the biggest and there’s a cool mix of unearthed, restored and still completely covered in soil and trees. So not only is there all this history, but there’s also so much nature too. On a par with some other incredible wildlife places we’ve been like Khao Yai or Gunung Leuser. It really did have it all. And I’m so glad we maximised our time here by staying in the park!

We also do not regret doing it alone without a guide. We like to take our time at some spots, like we stayed up temple IV for ages and also lost world, if we’d been with a guide we’d have felt rushed. And being on our own allowed us to explore the park at our own pace but also peacefully – for most of the day we hardly saw anyone else!

We returned to the hotel absolutely spent and just ate and went straight to bed, it rained again that night and in the morning we woke up aching and tired.

We had a relaxing morning at the lodge and then made our way to the colectivo stop in the car park. It was MUCH easier to get back to Flores! We were only there about 15 minutes before one showed up to take us back for Q50 each!

What a last few days! Join us in the next one! Thanks for reading!