· NORTH AMERICA · RUINS ·
My Indiana Jones Experience in Tikal, Guatemala
Scribbled by Claire ◊ 27 Dec 2021
This is just a weird little story about how I ended up completely alone in Tikal National Park with only the immense Mayan pyramids for company. It’s also a warning about how you should learn the local language, and how there’s often a hero around to help.
Even on a normal day, I simply cannot understand how Tikal is not a ‘world wonder’. It has an otherworldly, alien vibe that is unparalleled anywhere else I have been.
What I’m about to recount were no normal days, though. A monumental misunderstanding led us to have the most magical and unique experience at this most spectacular archaeological site – I endlessly pronounce it to people as my ‘Indiana Jones moment’, but without the snakes or Nazis.
Below is an account of our trip (the bits I haven’t mentally blocked out). It is mostly a story of mistakes and why you shouldn’t pretend to understand someone when you don’t. Other features of this tale include several seriously dreadful guesthouses, sitting out a hurricane in the grossest place ever, some scammers, and a hero.
The perfect recipe for a fairytale.
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Flores and Our First Mistake
Having arrived in Flores after a pleasant enough five-hour bus across the Belize border, we picked one of the cheapest (Flores is expensive) double rooms we could find at a hotel called ‘La Jungla’ (this was midway through a four-month trip and we were budgeting, seriously hard).
My immediate thoughts were along the lines of ‘oh f**k, this was an error’.
The room was on the top floor with a balcony, overlooking the loop road around the island. Little did we know when checking in that it is the noisiest, most congested and late-night club filled road we have ever had the displeasure of staying nearby. The roof of the building was constructed from corrugated iron (something to do with being a heritage site I think?) so the temperature was like an oven that never turned off. The ceiling fan barely functioned and the noise was so extreme that the windows had to stay shut. Other impressions were like that of any sketchy low-end hotel – very worn with minimal, mismatching furniture, bad lighting and a quirky (read: thoroughly unnecessary) window from the shower to the communal hallway.
It was one of my least favourite (but more memorable) nights, spent alternating between sweating in a star shape on the bed and taking cool showers. Did I mention it was the hot season? The next morning, after the owner unabashedly entered without knocking at 6am with a piece of dry toast and an apple, we got out as soon as possible.
The walk to the bus station was a simple two kilometres from Flores Island to mainland Santa Elena. We didn’t want an organised tour to Tikal from any of the agents nearby since we pre-booked accommodation in the park. I’d heard that the bus trip from Flores to Tikal should take about an hour, so we ventured out early to try and catch some public transport.
Observation | one thing I noticed having spent a fair while in Guatemala was that if you look unsure anywhere near a bus station, you will be mobbed by men. It is best to always make yourself appear busy, especially if you are a lone female (I never felt unsafe, just annoyingly hassled). My solution – an unhealthy habit of smoking cigarettes (I’ve quit this now). If I was lost or just hanging around, people mostly left me alone (not advocating smoking here – just my adopted tactic).
Our Next Mistake(s)
Back to the story and our next mistake. It turns out (should have done more research) that the buses to Tikal do not run on Sundays.
We dejectedly traipsed back, packs and all, a little concerned that we had a reservation for that evening that we couldn’t now reach. Back on the island, we found a hostel called the Green Monkey which had an affordable spare room. This turned out to be the second accommodation error of this tale.
The room had entirely lime green walls and ceiling with no external windows, a blue florescent light and a creepy dripping shower – all overlooking the hostel kitchen cookers. The smell was strangely acrid, the light would give even the toughest person a headache and the dripping noise made me feel like I was in a horror film.
One positive thing that day – the Tikal lodging we had booked was super accommodating and moved the dates until the next night. We have nothing but positive to say about the Hotel Jaguar Inn. We got this bit of our trip right!
First Impressions of Tikal
The next morning, we escaped the hideous lime green box-room and succeeded in finding a bus. After paying the national park entrance fee at the checkpoint, we checked into our lodge for two nights. Having arrived in the morning, we had nearly two entire days to burn. The day was looking up.
Observation | it seems to be rare that tourists get the public bus. I didn’t see any travellers in my time hanging around there. Most people appear to pay many dollars when there really isn’t any need (I remember being quoted $30+ pp for a tourist bus including a return and tour). We paid less than four dollars and the bus took us directly in (with no other tourists and some sacks of rice). It was simple, interesting and cheap.
We were there in the hot-rainy season. The skies weren’t always blue, but we didn’t have rain during any of our time in the park. It also meant fewer tourists, so typically there were never more than a few other groups of people in any area we went.
The park is enormous. It doesn’t feel like anywhere else I’ve ever been. Chitchen Itza, Copan, Palenque or Teotihuacan – all these felt inhabited, developed and well-manicured. Tikal was distinct in its remoteness, just winding mud tracks and tree root pathways through overgrown jungle canopies. Every now and again, you would spot the temples peeking through openings in the trees and it made you feel like you were the first to discover them.
We spent the entire first day wandering without a map, picking the opposite direction to any of the tour groups we found. It made our quest even more exhilarating.
Curious Moments and Translation Issues
In this tale though, the plot thickens in the evening.
After a day of traipsing about, we get back to the lodge and visit the restaurant (bring tonnes of food if you’re on a budget – it’s pricey). There are a few other people seated and a man in a suit is going around chatting with each group, so naturally I assume he was the manager, welcoming everyone.
He gets to our table and promptly discovers that we are the only tourists stupid enough to travel through Central America without knowing Spanish. He tries to ask us when we are leaving, do we have transport out (we respond ‘Si’ despite not having any) and then some other stuff that we nodded and smiled through but didn’t comprehend (like you do).
He left and I thought ‘Sweet! We got away with that without looking too stupid’.
For the rest of the evening, the heavens opened while we rested in our hammocks outside the room, watching the rain. These are the magical moments you miss in the dry season.
It’s Tikal – Where is Everyone?
It was opening time at the entrance the next morning. There was only one guard instead of four now, but maybe this was just to do with the time of day. I noted that near the entrance there were lots of minibuses, but people were getting on them, not off. It felt best to ignore this weirdness and we wandered into the park.
It took a little while for us to realise – we had not seen anybody, not a soul since we entered the park. Maybe it was just luck? Could everyone have walked the opposite direction to us? It was a gigantic place, after all.
Arriving in the central plaza area and still seeing nobody, I started to grow anxious – it was eerie, borderline creepy. The skies were a little overcast, howler monkey calls were making my skin crawl and the only other sounds were birds, our own echoey footsteps and some distant rolling thunder. I was actually pretty uncomfortable – the jungle prompted my active imagination to think of the film ‘Predator’.
It was mid-morning when these circumstances really dawned on us. Rationally (or not?), we chose to embrace this peculiar situation rather than turning back – after all the lone guard let us in, so surely we were not breaking any rules?
The rest of the day was magnificent. Sitting atop Temple IV for lunch, overlooking the canopy, watching spider monkeys swing from adjacent trees in near silence. Being all alone in this dense, sweltering jungle felt like one of those experiences you have in your dreams.
The howler monkey screaming sounded like a dinosaur was about to break through the trees (or maybe a portal from hell that had just opened). They felt super close, but I read subsequently that they are so loud and only *seem* nearby – you can hear them from up to 3 miles away.
The Explanation
Normally, large tour groups head over to Temple IV to view the sunset. But not this night. I was scared finding my way back and the sounds of the jungle seem to intensify with the growing darkness.
We made it to the lodge and headed straight for the restaurant, but almost all the lights were off (there were often power cuts, so it didn’t concern me much). We were hungry, having walked more than 30 kilometre and the one staff member there looked curiously surprised when we walked in. We asked for the cheapest thing on the menu, she looked a little unnerved and wandered off.
Sometime later, the manager rocked up and confronted us with a blunt ‘why are you here?’!
He followed with broken English of ‘there are park strikes, the entrance checkpoint is barricaded by demonstrators and there is no transport out’.
It then dawned on us – his queries the preceding night now made sense! I felt guilty, it was our lack of language skills that got us (and him) into this mess.
A stand-in chef kindly made us some food. Disconcertingly, the manager didn’t return after arranging the food, so we just left and went to bed. Something strange occurred to me afterwards on the way back – wasn’t it odd that the room cleaners didn’t flag that our stuff was still there? Then I figured – we had put up a do not disturb sign and most staff had likely left the park, so maybe that was how?
Escaping Tikal
Early the next morning, we woke up and didn’t know what to do. It was a 17-mile walk out of the park where we would be able to hitchhike the rest of the journey. I wasn’t in the slightest bit enthralled by this idea in the humid heat with our packs and blisters on my feet.
We saw the manager, in front of the lodge, chatting with a couple of guys. He hastened over to us and murmured ‘these men are leaving for Flores and will take you in their pickup truck if you pay 200 quetzals each’. We were on such a tight budget (200 quetzals was about £20 or $25 each) and considering these guys were going the same route as us anyway, it felt like a bit of a gouge (and I HATE being gauged).
My meagre Spanish blurted out ‘Yo no tengo dinero’ and I shook my head at the pickup men (primarily at the thought of a 17-mile walk and crossing a picket line we didn’t fully understand). We thanked the manager and walked away, getting ready to hike the road out.
Occasionally, someone does something so kind that it reaffirms your faith in humans. The pickup men were unquestionably trying to scam us, knowing we had few options. The manager could have left us, but instead he spoke with the men again. He beckoned us back over and enquired ‘how much do you have?’. We replied ’50 quetzals each’ with the use of hand gestures. He then produced the difference from his own pocket, handing over his money and ours to the scammers. He pointed to the pickup, we climbed onto the back of the pickup truck and it pulled away.
I was so relieved and grateful. I repeated ‘muchas gracias’ to him more times than I could count. This was one of the moments that I wish I had a better grasp on the language to really get across my gratitude. That man saved us from a 17-mile walk across a picket line in excruciating heat.
Unlucky News in Flores
Arriving back in Flores after some minor commotion from park protestors, my temperament was declining and Flores felt like a nightmare. It was too loud, full of traffic and beeping horns (seriously the honking horns here made Saigon seem chill).
I had some hope, though – our choice this time was another cheap, but better reviewed, guesthouse, ‘Villa Margarita’. At check-in, we opted to pay the little extra for the aircon to be turned on so we could literally chill out for a bit.
Maybe we could at least get one out of three in Flores, right?
Well the room wasn’t exactly great, but it was an improvement on the previous two, so I gave myself a mental high-five.
Sadly, it was too hasty a celebration. Logging into WiFi for the first time in days, my CNN alerts notified of an incoming storm. A hurricane was approaching from the east after ripping through the coast of Belize.
The next 24 hours or so was spent holed up in a room with no power and therefore none of that coveted aircon that we paid extra for. I was feeling a little bitter, which in hindsight was not the most sensitive emotion considering the island was getting a battering.
The situation worsened as we had almost no supply of food and dwindling drinking water. There *was* a whole tonne of water – but it was pouring down the walls, overflowing from the drain and in the toilet that wouldn’t flush. The wind was shaking loose the corrugated iron roof as we watched horizontal rain whip past the window.
Most of all, I was hangry, very hangry.
The storm carried on for a what felt like a week and I won’t go into detail about how we survived without a toilet, but eventually, the wind died down and the rivers in the street started to subside.
Desperate Escape
The next morning, the lady at the guesthouse refused our request to refund our extra aircon electricity money even though we didn’t have any opportunity to use it. This elevated my irritability levels (I was raging by this point) so we stormed out (see what I did there), skipping over fallen phone and power cables.
It was desperate – I could not imagine spending another second in Flores. We settled on booking the last two seats on a 10-hour overnight bus to Guatemala City, despite my no overnight bus rule (they’re the worst). The two seats were at the back under a dripping aircon vent and I’m pretty certain the bus was speeding around turns so fast that it was on the verge of tipping over – but that’s part of a different story.
The dawn in Guatemala City was the most beautiful sight when we arrived at 5am. Anywhere but Flores!
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