Another long bus ride, including a very old ferry across a river, brought us to Flores in Northern Guatemala. We stayed at Los Amigos Hostel, which had a fantastic set up and I definitely recommend it.  As soon as we arrived in Flores we immediately fell in love with it.  It is a small island on the shores of Lake Peten Itza and connected by a road to the city of Santa Elena.  It is tiny and you can walk everywhere on quaint cobble stoned streets.  The main reason people come here is to check out the ruins in Tikal, but we found the beautiful little town of Flores to be the best part.  Plus we had already seen ruins in Honduras and Andrew is very prone to ruin fatigue.

We loved eating dinner at a small and incredibly cheap roadside food market. It also had the advantage of being on the Lake, which made for incredible sunsets.

We were lucky that we had great weather, and a neat activity to do when the sun is out, is to grab one of the many water taxis out to Jorge’s Rope Swing. This is a private residence right on the lake and for a small fee you can use their various platforms and rope swings to jump into the lake.  There were hardly any people there, which made it a relaxing and picturesque way to spend the day.

We absolutely loved our time in Flores and wish that we could have stayed there longer. If you are heading to Flores I highly recommend staying more than 2 nights, especially if you want to head out to the ruins as well.

Here is a breakdown of our costs for 2 days:

Budget = US$143 (NZ$200)

Accommodation – US$48

Activities – US$6.50

Food/Drink – US$56.50

Travel (incl. Taxis) – US$29

Total spent – US$140 (NZ$196)

So we were only US$3 (NZ$4) under budget, pretty much right on track.