El Mirador
El Mirador: a 5-day trek through the Guatemalan jungle
Published on 02/11/2025
Most people follow the standard itinerary for Guatemala by visiting the famous mayan temples in Tikal, while completely missing this amazing mayan city closeby! Sure, it’s a lot more of a hassle getting there, but it’s all part of the experience, right? While Tikal is stuffed with tourists everyday, El Mirador is a true hidden gem of Guatemala. If you’re lucky, you’ll get the whole city to yourselves. In this article, I’ll tell you everything you need to know to decide whether you want to make the trip or not. Spoiler alert: I will definitely recommend you go.
What is El Mirador?
El Mirador means lookout in spanish, signalling the fact that the city contains one of the largest pyramids in the world, La Danta, from where you can view the forest. While the Lost Mayan City is one of the biggest ancient structures found in the world, it’s also one of the oldest, thriving from 6 centuries before christ. It was abandoned in the first century after christ, then occupied again and then abandoned again 9 centuries after christ. Compared to Tikal, which is excavated thoroughly, the city lays in ruins and has been reclaimed by the forest. But knowing it has been abandoned for at least a millennium, it’s crazy how much you can still see. Even crazier to think that while Tikal holds a lot of replica’s, in El Mirador you can see the actual originals!
So in summary if you don’t feel like reading everything: El Mirador is a very old, very big city in the middle of the jungle.
How can I go to El Mirador?
Obviously, this one is a bit trickier, since it is in the middle of the jungle. It is legal to do the trek by yourself, but you would have to be absolutely insane to do that, since it is very dangerous and you would have to carry equipment for five days by yourself. You’re also missing out on a lot of the interesting information tour guides have to offer.
It goes without saying that I would recommend a tour. You have two companies that offer tours to El Mirador: Dinastía Kan and Cooperativa Carmelita. Both tours offer about the same schedule and resources, BUT there is still a big difference: it has been rumored that Cooperativa Carmelita contributes to cutting down trees in the forest to pave a road to El Mirador (to make more money). Because there’s only one other company and Dinastía Kan is way smaller, they are trying to get a monopoly on the trip, so they can exploit the ruins and the nature around it. While the planning can be a bit trickier because their business is smaller, I would definitely recommend going with Dinastía Kan. The obvious reason is the care of the forest, but there are some other advantages of going with a smaller organisation. Communication beforehand was great, with them quickly answering all our questions. We also went in a small group of 5 people, which was the perfect amount to meet some new people while at the same time avoiding the problems and noise that come with walking in a big group. We met a Carmelita group along the way and this was a huge group, which brought a lot of overcrowding. So if you’re thinking about going, definitely message Dinastía Kan! And be careful, cause every tourist company trying to sell you a tour, will sell Cooperativa Carmelita’s tour. It’s always better to message the company directly.
When you figured out your company, there’s multiple tours to choose from. There’s a 5 day trek, a 6 day trek and a 7 day trek. This all depends on how long you’re wanting to stay in the jungle and how many temples you want to see. All the treks include the city of El Mirador and the most important landmarks, with the longer treks you’ll also include some extra temples. The advantage of the 7 day trek is also that you’ll walk a loop, while in the 5 day trek you walk the same path there and back. Personally, we took the 5 day trek because we felt like 5 days of walking would already be hard enough. So that’s what this article will be about.
There’s one other option: you can take a helicopter ride. Obviously this was way too expensive for us, so we didn’t really take this option into account. But if you aren’t able to walk all the way and are rich, this would be a good option. You’ll be missing out on the very cool experience of making your way through the jungle, but you’ll be gaining some amazing views along the way. At least, that’s what I imagine, cause as I said I wouldn’t have paid that money for the love of me.
What to expect from the 5 day trek with Dinastía Kan?
I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you: you do need to expect a lot of hardship, pain, blisters, heat exhaustion, sweat, dirt, nausea, annoying americans and scary spiders. BUT you also need to expect amazing meals, beautiful nature, funny monkeys, gorgeous views, bonding with trekmates, interesting facts, sunsets over the forest and a well-earned feeling of satisfaction that you made it to the temples! While I wouldn’t say it was easy, it is definitely possible for anyone with a moderate fitness level. You might hate yourself for signing up at some points, but most of the trip you’ll be wondering how you could ever doubt it in the first place.
During the trip you’ll be mostly walking in the morning. The first day you’ll rise in the middle of the night to make the drive from Flores to Carmelita, where you’ll have breakfast. After this you’ll start the first trek: 18km. An easy warmup, cause the second day will be 23km. The second night you’ll already sleep in El Mirador, because the third day you’ll be exploring the temples. The fourth day will start the way back with 23km, the same route as the first two days, just backwards. The fifth and final day will be 18km again and you’ll arrive in Carmelita early in the afternoon for lunch, after which you’ll drive back to Flores to relax the whole evening in your budget hotel.
During this time, you’ll be accompanied by a guide, a cook and a mule driver. In every camp there’s also some people that are staying there longterm. This means your every need will be met. The guide will obviously guide the group and offer interesting information. The cook will make sure you’ll have amazing meals and snacks, even in the middle of the jungle. The mule driver takes care of the stuff you won’t need while walking, so you only have to carry water, sunscreen and bug spray with you during the day. And if you get sick, like I was the first day, you can ride a little while on the mule to help you along. The only problem: the guides only speak spanish. With a bit of help from the group you’ll always get there eventually, but it’s smart to at least know a few words!
In the camps, tents will already be set up for you to sleep in and there’s even a way to “shower”. You can either get some water from the small pond or pay 10Q (around 1 euro) for a VIP 5 star luxury shower: a private place with a bucket of clean water. Every night you can watch the sunset from a temple that sticks out above the trees. Aside from the amazing view of the orange sky, seeing trees surrounding you everywhere you look and being joined by some monkeys to watch the sunset, it’s also a nice way to unwind as a group. After that, it’s time to go to bed early (around 8 or 9 o’clock), because the next day you’ll be rising with the birds as you’re gonna need to start walking again around 7 in the morning, to try (and fail) to avoid the heat. We also woke up for sunrise one day, but it was so cloudy we couldn’t even see the sun. So probably better if you save your extra hour of sleep.
While you already see some mayan structures along the way, the third day really is the main event. You’ll see ancient roads with decorations of legends on them, carvings that no one has figured out yet, climb huge pyramids, see mayan altars and if you dare, enter a pyramid into a cave full of bats. There’s already so much to see it’s insane to think that most of it isn’t even excavated yet and you might be walking on amazing undiscovered decorations. Luckily, this day you won’t have to walk as much and you’ll also get to chill in the hammocks to read your book. There’s even a place with a little electricity here, so if you’ve got some money to spare you can even buy a cold coke and some wifi.
All in all, this 5 day trek is just like a luxury resort. You just have to ignore the part where you have to walk the last 5km in the hottest part of the day with already tired feet and you feel more disgusting than you’ve ever felt. When you get there, it will all have been worth it.
