Bienvenidos a Guatemala! – Welcome to Guatemala!
After a smooth border crossing from Belize to Guatemala, one of Guatemala’s landmarks and highlights awaits us just over the border: Tikal.
Tikal, the Mayan ruins par excellence in Guatemala, is off the beaten track for many tourists and requires a lengthy journey from central Guatemala – for us, Tikal is almost directly on our itinerary. How great!
Even the journey to get there is an experience, the last 17 km are covered at a controlled, leisurely pace on a road in the middle of the jungle. Dense jungle to the left and right and there are probably lots of wild animals crossing this road – at least that’s the impression given by the warning signs.

Tikal National Park

A strictly regulated national park extends around the Mayan site to preserve nature and the dense jungle. This is what makes the experience in Tikal so impressive. As soon as we arrive at the main entrance to the ruined city, we are greeted by various animals in the parking lot and later at the campsite where we spend the night. Wild coatis, which are probably a little too used to humans for wild animals, roam the parking lot looking for something to eat. Later, we see wild turkeys and exotic birds in the trees around our campsite. And not only that, monkeys are also present in the national park. We often hear the howler monkeys, as their loud howls can be heard for several kilometers, but at least for several hundred meters. There are also many more wild animals, some of which we can’t even name. It’s really impressive to spend the night in the middle of the jungle, despite the simple infrastructure.

The ruined city of Tikal

In Tikal, we are once again overwhelmed by the sheer dimensions of the ruined city. The entire complex covers an area of several square kilometers and is home to impressive temple ruins. To avoid the large crowds of tourists, we use our overnight location directly in front of the park for an early morning exploration tour of Tikal. The first tourists, who are traveling without a guide, are allowed into the park at 06:00. We feel like we are the only tourists. And so, although we walk on wide paths, we feel like the first people of the day in the middle of the waking jungle. That too is an experience in itself.

Temple 4

Our first port of call is Temple 4, as it is one of the highest visitor platforms and offers a view over the entire Tikal complex. Unfortunately, after our walk to this ruin, we were disappointed: the wooden staircase and viewing platform are currently being restored and cannot be climbed until the end of the year. What a pity! Nevertheless, the experience itself is very impressive. We hike under a dense canopy of leaves and gradually a pyramid-shaped structure spreads out in front of us. Only when we are quite close we can appreciate its full dimensions and, above all, its height. Temple 4 rises 70 meters out of the ground, impressively breaking through the cones of trees in the jungle. We’ve been walking around the large complex for a good hour now and still haven’t met a single tourist. We enjoy the solitude for a moment before slowly making our way to the heart of the complex.

Along the way, between the striking building complexes, we can repeatedly see smaller structures and excavations. On one occasion there are large, carved stone slabs showing relief-like images of Mayas, on another occasion twin pyramids. However, the twin pyramids were rather two pyramid-shaped, overgrown mounds, as they were not uncovered due to their minor significance within the overall complex.

On the way to the Pyramid of the Lost World, we pass a temple which already had rudimentary windows at that time. This seems to be a very special feature, as virtually no other Maya buildings from this period had windows. Past the Jaguar temple and up to the second highest viewing platform on a pyramid in Tikal.

Pyramid of the lost world

The pyramid of the lost world is 30 meters high and on this pyramid we can climb into the treetops of the jungle. The view is really beautiful and impressive. From here we can see nothing but dense, green jungle. And in the surrounding area, this lush green is broken up by the few tall pyramids and temples and contrasted with the typical dark gray stonework. We enjoy this view for a long time before continuing our tour of Tikal. Not only the view, but also the pleasantly cool breeze at the top of the pyramid makes us pause for a while. After all, we’ve been walking around Tikal for almost two hours and could do with cooling off from the humid heat.

The large square

The center of Tikal, and therefore the center that attracts the most tourists, is the large square. Two large temple pyramids frame the square on the east and west sides. In addition, the square is framed by an acropolis on the north and south sides. This guarantees immersion in the world of the Maya on the large square. Surrounded by these ancient buildings with many smaller and larger ornaments as well as a viewing platform to view the buildings from above, you can spend some time here. And now the main streams of tourists have arrived in Tikal. By now it is well after 09:00 and we have to wait again for the good photo spots because they are occupied or so that we don’t walk too brashly into the photos of other tourists. But of course, we can understand the fascination, the site is very impressive and that’s exactly why we’re here too.

We complete our tour of Tikal after almost 4 hours and can’t even count all the buildings, pyramids and structures we have seen. Some large, many smaller and all in all we were able to visit a beautiful, immersive Mayan site in Tikal. The restorations have often been carried out with care, so that heavily restored temples stand next to similar, less restored temples and we were also able to understand the different stages of decay and reconstruction.

Tikal: Definitely worth a visit!
It is the first temple complex that (in our opinion) can compete with Angkor Wat in Cambodia.