Tikal

How to visit Tikal?

Tikal National Park is undoubtedly one of the highlights of any visit to Guatemala: a massive Mayan city nestled in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by monkeys and birds, under a blazing sun…

Just looking at the photo is enough to give you an idea of how enormous the original site must have been and how much of it has been swallowed up by the jungle… It covers 575 square kilometers of a site designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and what you’re about to see (which is already quite large in itself) is only a small part of what has been excavated.

Well, let's get down to business… How do you visit Tikal?

Tips to Know Before You Visit

• 
  Take the passport with you (They ask for ID at the ticket window), and when I was there (2023), they only accepted cash (150 Q)… although I remember there were a few ATMs at the entrance
• If you're driving your own car, be very careful about this: there's a first checkpoint where you buy your ticket (in the town called El Caoba, north of the lake), and then you have to drive about 15 km to a speed limit of 45 km/h. Now here's the best part: to monitor your speed, a police officer at the first checkpoint writes down your license plate number and the hour and minute you leave, and then another officer at the end checks your arrival time…
• The tour lasts 4 to 5 hours Walking at a brisk pace and hardly stopping… and that’s just seeing the basics. I’d say you’ll walk more than 10 km if you want to see everything, and even though the paths are easy, it’s not the best idea in the world to wear heels…
• There are places within the complex where they serve water, snacks etc… You'll need them, since a significant part of your trip involves climbing up and down the pyramids and temples
• A lot of animals !: There are lots of animals you can see if you venture off the main trails, mainly monkeys and coatis

Here we see a monkey carrying her baby on her back… Be very careful not to disturb, tease, or feed the monkeys, because not only is it prohibited, but it can also be dangerous.

How to Visit Tikal: A Walk Through the National Park

Welcome to the cradle of Mayan civilization in Guatemala.

Tikal began as a small farming village. Its first settlers established themselves in a highland area of the Petén, a hostile environment where the soil was arid and there were no nearby rivers. But Tikal gradually grew until a pivotal moment in its history occurred in the 4th century, when warriors and emissaries from the powerful Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacán arrived in Tikal. They intervened in local politics, established a new dynasty, and introduced military and architectural advancements that propelled the city’s power to new heights (it grew to have as many as 100,000 inhabitants—an astronomical number for its time).

Let's start with the tour… How do you visit Tikal?

The complex of buildings you encounter almost as soon as you arrive is the Gran Plaza (labeled “Plaza Mayor” on the map above), strategically designed to impress and to host public rituals and assemblies of the Maya elite.

This is where, for example, the enthronement of the new kings was celebrated: The heir would walk, surrounded by music and the smoke of copal, toward the North Acropolis, where he would receive the royal regalia (such as the quetzal-feather headdress); I suppose it would have been something like that…

The Great Plaza was also the site of somewhat less pleasant festivals: human sacrifices and blood rituals:

For them, these rituals were essential to maintaining the balance of the universe. High-ranking prisoners of war (such as kings or nobles captured from rival cities) were publicly sacrificed on altars such as Altar No. 5. Likewise, the king and queen performed self-sacrifices by piercing their tongues or genitals with stingray spines or obsidian to shed their own blood onto bark paper, which was then burned to invoke the ancestors.

In the photo below, you can see what look like “canopies” scattered throughout the plaza, along with what appear to be tombstones. These stones serve as Tikal’s “history books”; hieroglyphic texts were carved into them, recounting the military victories, sacrifices, coronation dates, and milestones of its rulers. 

Two enormous temples adorn the Great Plaza: the Temple of the Great Jaguar and the Temple of the Masks. Let's start with the first one.

In the year 695 A.D., the king of Tikal won a crushing victory over Calakmul (a rival city), even capturing its patron deities. The Great Jaguar was built in 732 AD to immortalize that triumph and cement Tikal’s return as the region’s superpower. It’s 47 meters tall, and I suppose the million-dollar question is whether you can climb to the top. Well, no. It’s pretty steep, and apparently a tourist died trying to climb it, so they’ve banned it…

No, I didn't climb up there; the photo was taken from a nearby temple. The great thing about Tikal is that, aside from a few protected structures, you can climb wherever you want.

The name “Great Jaguar” comes from a carved wooden lintel above the entrance, which depicts the monarch protected by a huge jaguar. Don’t waste your time looking for it with binoculars like I did—apparently, it’s in a museum in Switzerland or something like that…

Across from it (which you can actually climb) is the Temple of the Masks, offering great views of the plaza. Since the two temples face each other, during the equinoxes the sun rises exactly behind the Great Jaguar (and the king) and illuminates the facade of the Temple of the Masks. It was commissioned by the Great Jaguar monarch himself around 700 A.D. to honor his wife, Queen Lajchan Mo’ (also known as Lady Twelve Macaw). The king wanted to elevate the status of his consort, who came from a key allied dynasty that helped defeat his rivals from Calakmul.

The building's common name comes from the decorative motifs on its central staircase. On either side of the stairs leading to the top, the Maya carved two gigantic limestone masks.

These effigies depict faces with stylized features of the rain god, Chaac, or of earth monsters, designed to remind those ascending that they were leaving the earthly world to enter the divine realm.

Beyond all the history lessons, the great thing about this place is that you can always find a little empty spot to take a great photo.

The views from the towering Temple IV are magnificent; the first photo in this post was taken from up there. This structure is so enormous that you can only see a tiny part of it (the stairs), since the massive base is buried beneath the jungle.

And finally, the Lost World section, a sort of astronomical complex. It consists of a huge pyramid to the west, perfectly aligned with a long platform to the east that supports three small temples. Standing at the top of the pyramid, the priests could see the sun rise exactly over the northern temple during the summer solstice, over the central temple during the equinoxes, and over the southern temple during the winter solstice. To the north of the complex, you can climb Temple III to find another vantage point for a great photo 🙂

Once you leave the Grand Plaza and wander around on your own, you'll find yourself practically alone with the pyramids

In many of them, you can go inside and find all sorts of surprises, such as a colony of bats inside...

And, anyway, you can keep walking south to “hunt down” lost temples half-buried in the jungle, but after visiting the Great Plaza, they seem a bit lackluster…

How to Visit Tikal: Getting There from Flores/Santa Elena or El Remate

From Flores/Santa Elena

How can you visit Tikal from Flores? The vast majority of people book a private tour with… but if you’re an adventurer like me, you can get there on your own in several ways:

++ I stopped by the Santa Elena bus station to ask. Here, at the back of the station, a public minibus leaves at 9:00 a.m. that takes you there for 100 Q and picks you up again at 3:00 p.m. It was a sort of “official tourist” minibus, and everything seemed very well organized (though I can’t say for sure because I didn’t take it).

++ If you want a flexible schedule, there are minibuses scattered around that go directly from Santa Elena to the second checkpoint at Tikal (inside the ruins). Unfortunately, it’s impossible to find out their schedule because everyone I asked told me something different…
…so the adventurous option is to take one of the (now, indeed) numerous minibuses that take you to the village closest to the first checkpoint (where you buy your ticket), called El Caoba. Once there, you can either wait for one of the minibuses that cover the remaining 15 km to the second checkpoint or hitchhike like I did…

The return trip is a bit more difficult for the reason mentioned above: you don’t know the schedule for the public minibuses. I ran into one of the drivers by chance, and he told me that one of the last ones left at 4:30 p.m. The best option is to be bold and convince (with a tip) one of the private minibus drivers to make room for you and drop you off… It took me 5–6 tries, but in the end, a very kind man not only dropped me off but also charged me a fair price!!

From El Remate

So, how do you visit Tikal from El Remate? A much better option than leaving from Flores or Santa Elena is to set out from this charming little town next to Lake Petén called El Remate.

Don't expect any luxury here: it's really just a string of houses, small family-run hotels, and restaurants built along the road that runs between Flores and Tikal (which, on the map, would be to the north, already outside the frame).

The advantage is that you're much closer to Tikal than you would be from Flores, so you save an hour of travel time (the trip from Flores to here) and, most importantly, you can arrive at Tikal much earlier than the organized tours and have the park all to yourself.

Plus, in the afternoon, you can treat yourself to a breathtaking view of the lake.

There isn't an official stop (as far as I know) for public transportation to Tikal; I hitchhiked in the middle of the road, and the first minibus that came by picked me up and took me to El Caoba 🙂

Well, I hope I've helped you learn a little more about how to visit Tikal on your own… it's quite an adventure, but it's definitely worth it.

Well, anyway, this is Tikal's official website: https://tikalnationalpark.org

And to learn more about Guatemala: https://999millas.net/es/category/paises/guatemala/

Texto y fotos: Mike !