🇬🇹 Guatemala · Petén and the north
Flores is one of those postcards that wins you over the moment you arrive: a small island of cobbled streets and brightly painted houses, crowned by a church and a lookout, floating on the calm waters of Lake Petén Itzá, in the heart of the jungle of northern Guatemala. Connected to the mainland by a causeway, this tiny, charming island is Petén's tourist base par excellence and the gateway to the great Maya ruins of the region, starting with the legendary Tikal.
But Flores isn't just a convenient base: it has an extraordinary history. On this island stood Nojpetén (also called Tayasal), the capital of the Itzá Maya and the last independent Maya city, which held out against the Spanish for almost two centuries after the rest of the Maya world had fallen, until its conquest in 1697. Today, wandering its little streets, watching the golden sunset over the lake from the promenade and soaking up its relaxed, bohemian atmosphere is one of the pleasures of a trip to Petén.
This guide covers Flores with a practical and warm eye: what to do on the island and around it, how to organize visits to Tikal, Yaxhá and the other Maya sites from here, what boat trips to take on Lake Petén Itzá, how to get there (by plane or bus), where to eat and sleep, and how to get around. Small, picturesque and strategic, Flores combines the charm of a little island town with the thrill of being the antechamber to some of the most impressive archaeological treasures in all the Americas.
The island of Flores sits on the site of Nojpetén (which the Spanish called Tayasal), the capital of the Itzá Maya and the last great independent Maya city. While most of the Maya world had collapsed centuries earlier (with the abandonment of cities like Tikal), and while the rest of Guatemala had already been conquered by the Spanish in the 16th century, the Itzá held out on their island in the middle of Lake Petén Itzá, in the deep and hard-to-reach jungle of Petén. According to tradition, the Itzá came from the region of Chichén Itzá, in Yucatán, from where they had migrated centuries earlier. Nojpetén remained an independent Maya kingdom, with its own temples and organization, for almost two centuries longer than the rest of the territory. There were several contacts with the Spanish (including, according to tradition, Hernán Cortés passing through in the 16th century), but the city kept its independence until, finally, on 13 March 1697, Spanish forces commanded by Martín de Ursúa conquered Nojpetén, marking the end of the last independent Maya city. On the ruins of the Itzá city the colonial town was founded, which in time became Flores, capital of Petén. For centuries, Petén was a remote, isolated and thinly populated region, given over to exploiting the jungle (timber, chicle). The 20th century, with the rediscovery of Tikal and the growth of tourism, turned Flores into the base for visiting the Maya world. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The vast jungle department of the north, cradle of Maya civilisation: home to Tikal, El Mirador, Yaxhá and dozens of thousand-year-old cities, to Tayasal, the last independent Maya kingdom (defeated in 1697), and to the enormous Maya Biosphere Reserve.
Read the history of Petén →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The history of Flores is, in truth, the history of Nojpetén, the Maya city that occupied the island before the Spanish arrived and on whose ruins the present town stands. Nojpetén (also written Noh Petén, and called Tayasal by the Spanish) was the capital of the Itzá Maya, a Maya people who dominated the Lake Petén Itzá region in the jungle of northern Guatemala.
According to tradition, gathered in chronicles and colonial sources, the Itzá came originally from the Yucatán region, more precisely from Chichén Itzá (whose name, 'the mouth of the well of the Itzá', refers to this very people). After the fall or decline of Chichén Itzá, the Itzá are said to have migrated south, pushing into the Petén jungle until they settled around the lake, where they founded Nojpetén on the island that is Flores today. The name of the lake, Petén Itzá, still carries the imprint of this people.
The location of Nojpetén, on an island in the middle of a lake surrounded by deep, hard-to-reach jungle, proved providential: it made the city a natural refuge, protected and isolated. While in other parts of the Maya world the great cities had collapsed centuries earlier, the Itzá kept a living Maya kingdom on their island, with its temples, its idols, its social organization and its religion. That isolated position would be the key to their extraordinary resistance against the Spanish conquest, allowing them to remain independent far longer than any other Maya people.
The first documented contact between the Itzá of Nojpetén and the Spanish is attributed, according to tradition, to none other than Hernán Cortés. In 1525, during his long and gruelling expedition from Mexico toward Honduras (through the jungle), Cortés is said to have passed through the Lake Petén Itzá region and visited Nojpetén, received by the Itzá ruler of the day (the Canek, the title of the Itzá kings). Legend has it that Cortés left behind a sick or injured horse, which the Itzá, astonished by an animal they had never seen, tried to care for and even, after its death, venerated in the form of a stone idol they called Tziminchak ('thunder horse').
After that episode, Nojpetén was once again left isolated from the Spanish advance for a long time. While the conquistadors subdued the rest of Guatemala in the 16th century, the Petén region, remote and blanketed in jungle, was left aside, and the Itzá kept their independence. There were later contacts, above all with Franciscan missionaries who, through the 17th century, tried to approach the Itzá to evangelize them peacefully, with limited and at times tragic results.
The survival of an independent Maya kingdom in the very heart of territory dominated by Spain became, over time, ever more intolerable to the colonial authorities, both for religious reasons (the 'idolatry' of the Itzá) and strategic ones (controlling the route between Yucatán and Guatemala). The noose around Nojpetén tightened, until the Crown decided to put an end, by force, to the last independent Maya stronghold.
Through the 17th century, the pressure on the last independent Maya kingdom intensified. The Spanish authorities, from both Yucatán and Guatemala, wanted to subdue the Itzá, evangelize them and open a safe route across Petén. After several failed attempts at peaceful conversion and a number of expeditions, the Crown finally authorized a military campaign.
The definitive conquest came on 13 March 1697. Spanish forces commanded by Martín de Ursúa y Arizmendi, who had had a road built from Yucatán to the lake and prepared vessels for the assault, attacked Nojpetén by water. Aboard an armed galley, the Spanish landed on the island and, after a fight, took the city. The Itzá ruler, the Canek, was captured. With the fall of Nojpetén fell the last independent Maya state: almost two centuries of resistance came to an end, and with them the long history of the Maya world's political independence, which had begun millennia earlier.
The fall of Nojpetén carries enormous symbolic weight: it marks the closing point of the conquest of the Maya world, coming almost 180 years after Cortés arrived in Mexico. On the conquered island, the Spanish destroyed the Itzá temples and idols and established a Christian colonial town, laying the foundations of what would in time become Flores. But the memory of Nojpetén, of the Itzá and of their legendary resistance lives on, and makes the small, charming island of Flores a place of deep historical meaning.
After the conquest of Nojpetén, a colonial town was established on the island which, in time, took the name of Flores (in honor of a 19th-century figure). But through the colonial centuries and much of the republican era, Petén remained what it had always been: a remote, isolated, thinly populated region blanketed by one of the largest jungles in Mesoamerica. Far from the centers of power, poorly connected and hard to reach, the region was left largely outside the development of the rest of the country.
Life in Petén revolved for a long time around exploiting the resources of the jungle. Precious hardwoods were extracted and, above all, through much of the 20th century, chicle: the sap of the sapodilla tree, the raw material of chewing gum, harvested in the jungle (the collectors were the celebrated 'chicleros') and exported. The chicle economy shaped Petén's social history for decades, with its jungle camps and its extraction routes.
Flores, as the capital of Petén, was a small administrative and commercial center in the middle of that jungle immensity. The region's isolation lasted well into the 20th century: for a long time, the most practical way to reach Flores was by plane or along punishing tracks through the jungle. Only in the closing decades of the 20th century, with better roads, the growth of tourism and expanding agricultural colonization, did Petén begin to integrate more with the rest of Guatemala, not without generating severe environmental pressure on its extraordinary jungle.
The great transformation of Flores and Petén in recent decades came hand in hand with the rediscovery of the Maya world and the growth of tourism. As the archaeological exploration of Tikal (from the mid-20th century onward) revealed to the world the scale of the ancient city, and Tikal National Park was created (1955), the Petén jungle began to draw travelers, scholars and adventurers interested in Maya civilization.
Tikal's designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, together with improved connections (the highway and, above all, regular flights to the Santa Elena airport), progressively turned Flores into the tourist base par excellence of the Guatemalan Maya world. The small island, with its picturesque charm, its lake and its strategic location, was the ideal place to house visitors coming to marvel at Tikal and the other sites.
Today, tourism is one of the pillars of the economy of Flores and its region. The island lives largely off travelers who use it as base camp for Tikal, Yaxhá, El Mirador and the other archaeological treasures, and who enjoy its relaxed atmosphere, its sunsets over the lake and its food. But Petén also faces great challenges: deforestation, the advance of the agricultural and cattle frontier, fires and the looting of archaeological sites threaten the Maya Biosphere Reserve, one of the largest remnants of tropical forest in Mesoamerica. The history of Flores —from capital of the last Maya kingdom to base for Maya tourism— thus holds a paradox and a responsibility: to preserve the jungle and the heritage that made it famous.