Sneaking into THE Mayan ruins of Guatemala: Tikal

Written by Tyler Cole | 14 May 2010

 

After the natural wonder of Semuc Champey, I made my way to the man-made wonder of Tikal in northern Guatemala, one of (if not) the most impressive and largest Mayan ruins uncovered to date. It was popular to go early in the morning, but I wasn´t in the mood to wake up at 4:30 in the morning. Besdies, I was working out a strategy to get in for free or cheap to Tikal after talking with some Norwegians who managed to get somone´s ticket and use it to get in for half-price. The tickets worked out to about 21 USD (not including transport there), so I was eager to find some way to dodge the price. I would have gladly paid if I was more financially endowed, but when I´m trying to keep my budget around 15 dollars a day this sort of thing is quite a burden. I was not without moral qualums, and I roundabout justified it by telling myself they wouldn´t have made it so easy to sneak in if they weren´t actually winking figuratively at the poor, saavy traveler while trying to extract as much money as possible from the suitcase travelers (there was no student price since those a frequently abused, just a Guatemalan citizen price that was about 3 dollars). After taking a look at a few people´s tickets who

went the day before, I saw there was no ID for whoever bought it, it was valid for the whole day, and you could use it to re-enter. Basically, that meant if I could catch some people leaving who had gone in the morning around noon time when I planned to show up, I could just ask them for their ticket and walk in. I was prepared to offer something for the tickets, but a few girls just handed one off to me after I asked (they had to, "Save the other one for their scrapbook"). Step one was complete. I just walked into the entrance like I had just left to eat, the guards took a quick look at the ticket and said, "Adelante". And like that I was free to explore Tikal for the rest of the day with my German friend Richard with a 12,000 dollar budget. He didn´t mind paying the full price. Pictures are below.