Eldon and Dawn Hurst's Travels: Tikal

When we arrived at Tikal we paid our entry fee and drove for 45 minutes to get to the hotels and main entry spot. There were road signs along the way for snake crossing, jaguar crossing, turkey crossing and some critter we believe was some sort of critter that lived mostly on the ground.

? Crossing

Snake Crossing

Turkey Crossing

Jaguar Crossing

Deer Crossing

We went confidently to our hotel where we had reservations only to find that the reservations we had made were at another hotel 1 1/2 hours back toward Coban with the same name! This one did not have any openings. We decided to try another hotel there and were in luck. We got three rooms. There was one outlet in the large room for the table lamp and battery powered light. No outlets in the bathroom. All power was turned off at 9:30 (hence the need for the battery lamp) and turned on again at 7:30am. Since the hot water was electric that also turned off. We had leaves growing through the window in the bathroom.

Our hotel for the night

Leaves growing into the bathroom window

Turkeys wandering through the yard in the morning

We hired a guide and a pickup with chairs in the back and in the morning he met us and took us to the "better" place to eat, we all piled into the pickup and were off on our adventure.

Benches in the back of a pickup

Our first stop, and only stop was at the Pyramid of the jaguar. We all climbed out of the truck and began our trek.

Looking up from the back of Jaguar Temple

Looking into the plaza at jaguar temple

View from the top of Temple 4. Long Climb. The blue tarp on the temple to the right is covering lightning stick damage.

One of the smaller temples

On top of Temple 4. Largest of the temples

The archaeologist make small openings in the temples to see what is underneath. This one had two other temples under it. They left the opening so you could see the wall of the next temple. Original wood still is visible in some places.