Tikal ruins
Trip Start
Jun 20, 2007
1
23
30
Trip End
Sep 03, 2007
El Remate, Guatemala
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Here was probably the single most annoying thing with travelling this part of the world. The bloody exit taxes that every country seems to charge. By road most taxes are a couple of dollars, $8 in Nicaragua, I think $2 or$3 in Honduras. But get on a plane and suddenly the Honduras departure tax jumps to $33 per person! Ridiculous. The Belize departure tax is $15 per person everytime you leave the country, even if (as we were) you only pass through the country in one day. They actually charge $18.50 if you stay more than a day.
Anyway that aside the flight was really worth as otherwise the travel would have been twice as long, effectively taking 2 days. So despite the expense we got ourselves an extra day by flying.
The town of El Remate is a really small place on the shore of Lago Peten, about 40 minutes frmo Tikal. We took a 5am bus to the ruins and met our guide who turned out to be really good and he knew his stuff very very well. By getting there so early we were there ahead of the worst of hte crowds so the place was really peaceful for the first couple of hours. The ruins of Tikal are in the middle of the jungle so the temple that have ben cleared rise above the treetops as if from nowhere. The tallest Mayan temple is here and its quite a climb, each step being really high and the overall staircase being really steep.
After we'd wandered the ruins a while on our own we returned to El Remate where we found that there was no atm in town. Having only crossed the border for 2 nights we had very little cash and had yet another incident of trying to find a way of paying. In order to get it all done, we had to book our bus to Belize through our hotel and have dinner there too then put it all along with the cost of our accommodation on the old credit card. Thank god the hotel accepted credit cards or we'd probably still be there.
