Hello all! This week I would like to share another travel story with you.
Tikal National Park in Guatemala.
Tikal was one of the biggest Mayan cities during the Classic Period (c. 250–900 AD) and you can find it in the Petén Department in northern Guatemala. The site was discovered in the 1840s and is now a National Park which you can visit.
Temple 1 on the Great Plaza of Tikal
We stayed in a nearby town called Flores. A cute little town that is built on a small peninsula in the Lago Petén Itzá. Most people stay here to visit Tikal for one or two days.
Location of Tikal, Flores is near the lake below Tikal (source Google Maps)
You can go to any tourist office in town and book a (guided) tour. You can also do a sunrise or sunset tour which are slightly more expensive (50 quetzal more, the regular ticket is 200 quetzal, like $ 20). They will pick you up at your accommodation early in the morning (yeah like 4:30 or so), and will drive you to the park entrance in one and a half hour. Here you will need to buy a ticket and don’t forget to bring your passport because you will need to show it (it’s a personal ticket).
We bargained a guided tour with the tourist office because we needed some other services from them as well, but we ditched the group after half an hour. It was just to big (30 people) and the guide, although very interesting, was pretty extensive. I think we made a good choice there because we ended up on many places in the park just by our self.
Inside the park you will find many altars, temples and other structures. It is so fascinating to walk in this completely other world. To imagine that people actually lived there, that it used to be a vibrant city and that they just have excavated 20% of the city. The Mayan civilization and their knowledge was quite advanced. There calendar is still more accurate than our western calendar is. And the way they have built there cities is pretty fascinating. For example: each plaza consist of temples and altars on each direction of the wind. Then they placed these kind of gravestones in front of the building. In the middle of the plaza there is this place where they would make a fire for sacrifices. If you would stand there in the middle and clap your hands, the way the buildings and stones are placed, it produces a noise that sounds exactly like the Quetzal bird, the national bird of Guatemala. This bird was a symbol for the Mayans of freedom and wealth. Anyway, I would be pretty impressed if someone would be able to build something like that nowadays. And they did it ages ago.
Enough of me talking, time for some more pictures:
Backside of Temple 1
View from the 65 meter high Temple 4. Fun fact, this area is used in Star Wars movies
Great Plaza with Temple 2 on the left side and the stones in front
Temple 3, the stairs are so steep
Looks nice right??!
Well, enough about Tikal for now. I hope you enjoyed my story and will find the time to read any of my future post.
I would definitely recommend Tikal as a must do if you would find yourself in Guatemala one day.
Once again, thanks for reading, And feel free to post your own experience about Tikal or any of the other places I blogged about. I love to read them.