The beautiful national park boasts monkeys, jaguars and dense rainforest – and it may look familiar to Star Wars fans as it was a filming location in A New Hope
If you like monkeys as much as ancient history then Tikal National Park’s entrance fee may well just be the best £15 you spend on an adventure.
After around 10 minutes of walking with an umbrella in hand in the Guatemalan jungle, the forest opened up to the most important of 3,000 buildings spread over 16 square kilometres.
My imagination ran wild at each ruin we stumbled upon. I practically chanted ‘just one step after another’ as we trudged our way up an ancient pyramid for a view once reserved for Mayan royalty chasing the heavens. Whether it was taking the steps of the structure itself or an adjacent staircase fitted far more recently, the cardio to reward ratio was much the same – well worth it.
A bit further off the beaten track in Peten is Yaxha National Park, offering the same leg-burning pyramid climbs and awe-inspiring views with even fewer visitors for company. Close to the Belize border, Tikal and Yaxha are windows into the thriving cities of the Mayan people – a civilisation that stretched across central America, or as our guide Camillo called it, Meso-America.
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The respective sites date as far back as 900BC but most of the immense structures we saw in Tikal were built almost 2,000 years later making it the Mayan place to be. Then Tikal met its mysterious decline in the ninth century and the site was soon abandoned. Countless palaces and temples were swallowed up by jungle in the millennia that followed.
A government-backed expedition in 1848 set the wheels in motion to unearth the secrets and legends buried with the city in the forest floor.
The parks are now fascinating rainforests as rich in nature as they are history. A massive band of coatimundis fearlessly played around us on the ground as spider monkeys swung across some of the 200 tree species up above. More than a dozen jaguars even call Tikal home, our guide Camillo told us.
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I was quick to dismiss the Mayan belief that ascending such a structure brought their god-like rulers closer to their immortal peers in the sky. That was until I made the climb myself and I understood just how spiritual an experience such elevation must have been. Standing above a vast green canopy broken up only by the odd ancient tower was an otherworldly sight, amplified by the soundtrack of roaring howler monkeys.
Star Wars fans will recognise certain shots or Tikal from Episode IV: A New Hope as the UNESCO site set the scene for the Rebel Alliance base.
At the end of an hour’s rural drive from Flores, sheltered open-air gift shops and a model-sized version of the city welcome visitors, although rainy season meant the area felt eerily deserted.
To avoid the fleeting downpours we were caught up in, it is probably best to stick to the months between November and April…
For more information see visitguatemala.gt.