"Temples of Tikal" Top 5 Page for this destination Tikal Tip by Bwana_Brown

In addition to exploring a Mayan cave, the other main objective of our stay on the western border of Belize was to work in a trip to Tikal National Park, not too far away in Guatemala. We talked over the options of how this could be done with the Trek Stop owners as well as with other guests who had already done it. We could have booked a day-trip with the Trek Stop (US$80 each I believe) but we really wanted to experience either a sunset or sunrise while atop the temples, so that would not work. In the end, we decided to just take off on our own without any prior arrangements. The Trek Stop was very helpful even with that, they said we could leave our large backpacks in our cabin at no charge for the night we were away!

The next morning we headed out early to get across the border, find transportation of some sort to Tikal and then see if there was any accommodations available. In the end, it all worked out fantastically well (see my 'Tikal National Park' page for the full story)! We had a great time taking in as many of the sights as we could during our two half-days there. Temple I (the Great Jaguar) and the surrounding complexes are probably the most impressive structures, but there was so much to see it was hard to believe. We certainly got our exercise in as we trudged up and down hills and temples in the boiling heat of the day. It is a great National Park, set in the middle of the jungle all by itself - the generators go off at night and it is lights out from 10 PM to 6 AM!

Directions: Cross the border to Guatemala (see map in my 'General' tip)
Phone: (415) 762-3996
Website: http://www.tikalpark.com/