It's possible to take a 1 day tour from San Ignacio: drive all the way to Tikal, explore the ruins, and drive all the way back. It's expensive and a lot of time in the car, although simpler than what we did, and appealing if you didn't want to have to think about currency or tickets or timing or bus routes or food. We were pretty sure that our kids wouldn't want an official tour of the ruins with a guide, because they wouldn't want to sit through all the details of each structure and all the history on each ruler, so we decided to explore on our own without any guide.
We wanted to spend the night and be able to experience sunrise at the ruins, because we had heard that watching the sunrise and the sounds of the jungle waking up was a special experience. We also wanted to do a little bit of our own thing in order to experience Guatemala (at least a little bit) and practice some Spanish.
However, we had heard mixed things about the border crossing and the challenges of getting from San Ignacio to Tikal safely. We decided to pay PacZ tours for a shuttle (transport only) from San Ignacio to Tikal - no tour, and then spend the night camping in a rented tent at the Jaguar Inn, and then make our own way back to San Ignacio the next day. We had booked our camping night at the Jaguar Inn a couple of months ago, and then booked the shuttle with PacZ once we were in San Ignacio.
https://www.pacztours.net/
https://www.jaguartikal.com/
We left San Ignacio at about 7:30am in a van with a few others, and left some of our luggage behind at our hotel. We drove to the border (maybe 45 min in the car) and got out of the vehicle and walked into the Belize customs building to pay our exit fee. There were many people on both sides of the border eager to help us change currency ("cambio"), and our guide directed us to one particular man who gave us a good rate to get some Guatemalan quetzeles. We walked from the Belize building to the Guatemala building and then paid our entrance fee in our new Guatemalan currency, and then exited the building and walked toward another driver and into another van. None of this felt sketchy, unsafe, or scary in the slightest. I read some things on trip advisor from other travelers that made me feel nervous about this... and I'm certain I would not have felt scared, even if we had done every part of this on our own.
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| border |
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| Guatemala building at the border |
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| New Currency |
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| Rachel and Ava in a van in Guatemala |
We rode in the new van from the Guatemalan border to Tikal, with one stop along the way for bathrooms and coffee/snacks, and then a second stop for us to pay for our tickets. Our guide bought our tickets for us at the gate - day tickets for the day and sunrise tickets for the next day.
When we arrived at the park entrance (about 2 hours after we left the border), we said goodbye to the guide and checked into the Jaguar Inn and left our larger bags there. We were also informed that it is mandatory to have a guide for the sunrise tour and the inn recommended a guide and told us how much that would cost.
We then set off to explore Tikal on our own. It was a huge complex with many ways to go and many trails, but also several maps and helpful signs. We just weren't sure what was the most efficient way of exploring. We were happy that we were allowed to climb up and down many of the structures and the girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves. It felt to each of us like there was a huge fort to play in. We climbed over 500 steps up and 500 steps down throughout the day, and some of those steps were STEEP!
We took one backpack of snacks/sandwiches, water bottles and wore our raincoats. Most other visitors had ponchos on as it was raining. There were a few snacks (chips and soda) for sale inside the area, but not much actual food and no hot drinks. It's often super hot (90F) there and people are probably dying of thirst, but we didn't have that experience.
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| Temple VI peeking out of the jungle in the distance |
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| Can you see where we are hiding from the rain? |
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| Hiding from the rain playing a game |
After we explored the main plaza and saw the famous Jaguar Temple, we saw many coatimundi animals playing in the plaza. They are really cute! But we were wet and tired and ready to walk back to our hotel. Other amazing birds, including vultures and cranes and turkeys were also around.
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| The famous Jaguar Temple |
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| The main plaza |
When we arrived at our tent, which was only a 3 min walk from the park entrance, we were disappointed to see that the 4 person coleman tent was saturated and it was still raining, with a forecast to continue raining all night and beyond. Inside the tent, staff had put 4 mattresses and sheets and quilts for us, but most of this was now wet and water was dripping in steadily from the ceiling.
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| Green 4 person tent, after the rain let up |
We talked to the staff and were given options for a different tent setup or we could take the last hotel room available and it had three beds and a bathroom. We got a screaming deal and were very happy with the customer service, but also THRILLED to get inside a warm and dry room and change into dry clothes and hang up our wet stuff to air out.
We had a lovely dinner at the Jaguar Inn restaurant. It was delicious and we didn't see many other food options around. Some little stands near the hotel had chips and perhaps a tamale inside a cooler. If there were other restaurant options further beyond, we didn't see them but we didn't explore very far because we were done with being outside in the wet.
We slept well and then woke up at 4am to get ready for the sunrise tour. We planned on being in the grounds until about 10am and then coming back to the hotel for our bags before departing, so it was lovely to not have to check out until after the sunrise experience. We met our guide and two other travelers, and proceeded to hike the 45 min in the dark and rain toward temple IV. It's 176 steps up to the top, and we were instructed to go sit on the steps at the top of the temple and be silent from 5:30am until 6:30am, watch the jungle wake up, and then return to our guide at the stairs.
We weren't sure how our kids would do being still and silent for one whole hour, but we snuggled up and they did much better than several other travelers. There was no sunrise, since it was raining/cloudy/misty, but the jungle did appear in a soft morning dawn and temples of the ruins were visible in the distance. It did go from being silent to hearing more birds wake up, and then a howler monkey roared and we nearly jumped out of surprise at the sudden change in volume. More howler monkeys started up here and there over the next several minutes, which was fun. We were chilly and damp, but it was still a cool experience.
After coming down from Temple IV, we had to stay with our guide for the rest of the tour. Since we had already explored the day before, much of the information was repeated and our kids did have to sit through the Mayan history lesson as we explored the majority of the site. Eventually (after 10am), our guide escorted us back to the entrance gate.
We found a restaurant we hadn't seen the night before (close to the entrance gate, slightly further from our hotel) and had an awesome hot pancake and egg breakfast.
We checked out of our hotel with instructions on how to work out our own transport back to the border. Right away a driver of a collectivo offered us a ride in his van to the main intersection at El Remante, so we jumped in with our bags. Local passengers got on and got off all the time and it was fun to see the locals and listen to Spanish and see the homes of the locals and their belongings and clothing. At our intersection, we got off and walked across the street to catch the next collectivo van heading the other way. We stuck our arm out and waited approximately 1 minute before a van pulled over and picked us up. We took this one all the way to the last stop - the border. The van pulled into a transit station of sorts - many collectivo vans were parked there and I needed to get a key from an attendand to use the rest room, but it was free. (Did I mention yet that some public washrooms in Belize cost $1 belizian or $.50 US but others are free? And did I mention that toilet paper doesn't get flushed in the toilet, but goes in the waste paper basket?)
We gathered our bags and walked across the bridge to the Belize border on foot. We still had some Guatemalan currency, but couldn't find much to spend it on, and many people offered us "cambio" on both sides of the border as we went through the border process. First we went in the Guatemalan building and got an exit stamp (no exit fee). Then we went in the Belize building and got an entry stamp (no entry fee), and then we walked into a taxi stand area and caught a taxi through the border town of Benque to the local bus station, which was on the other side of town (maybe a 10 min drive). This was all quite easy and everyone was friendly and helpful throughout.
At the bus station we were able to catch a local bus, eventually bound for Belize City, which stopped in San Ignacio. Apparently it was an express bus but it stopped whenever anyone needed to get on or off between the border and Belmopan. I guess between Belmopan and Belize City it actually becomes an express bus and doesn't make any stops on that section.
We got off at San Ignacio and checked back into the lovely Casa Blanca guesthouse, and retrieved the luggage we had left in storage. We were happy to have hot showers, do some basic laundry in our hotel room and turn on the fan to dry out so many of our soaking wet items. It was still raining some, and most everything we owned was now damp.
We spent one night in San Ignacio and then packed up, ready to leave the Western "Cayo district" and move South East for our next stop.
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