Arrival and Information
The best way to reach the ruins is in one of the tourist minibuses which meet flights from the capital and are operated by just about every hotel in Flores and Santa Elena, starting at 4am to catch the sunrise. In addition a local bus (Pinita) leaves the market at 1pm, arriving at Tikal about two hours later, then continuing to Uaxactun, before returning to Santa Elena at 5am. If you're travelling from Belize to Tikal, there is no need to go all the way to Flores; get off instead at Puente Ixlu - the three-way junction at the eastern end of Lago de Peten Itza - to change buses. The local bus from Santa Elena to Tikal and Uaxactun comes through at about 2pm, and there are passing minibuses all day long, at their most frequent in the mornings. Admission to the national park costs US$6.40 a day (payable every day you stay at the site; if you arrive after 3pm you'll be given a ticket for the next day). The ruins are open daily from 6am to 6pm; extensions to 8pm can be obtained from the inspectoria (7am-noon & 2-5pm), a small white hut to the left of the entrance to the ruins. A licensed guide (US$40 for a 4hr tour) is an extremely worthwhile investment if you can afford it. Many, including Eulogio Lopez Garcia and Jose Luis Morales Monzon, speak excellent English, and they all know the site really well. You'll find them waiting for business by the visitor centre and the inspectoria gate. The site also has a post office , shops and visitor centre , where you'll find an overpriced cafe-restaurant, souvenir stalls and the Museo Litico (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat & Sun 9am-4pm; free), which houses nineteen stelae, though they're very poorly labelled and there is no supplementary information in English. Two books of note are usually available: Michael Coe's Tikal: A Handbook to the Ancient Maya Ruins is the best guide to the site, while The Birds of Tikal , although by no means comprehensive, is useful for identifying some of the hundreds of species you might come across as you wander round. At the entrance, between the Jungle Lodge and Jaguar Inn hotels, the one-room Museo Tikal (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat & Sun 9am-4pm; US$1.30) houses some of the artefacts found in the ruins, including jewellery, ceramics, obsidian eccentric flints, the jade jewellery found in tumba 116 and the magnificent Stela 31, which shows the Tikal ruler Smoking Frog bearing a jaguar-head belt and a jade necklace. There's also a spectacular reconstruction of Hasaw Chan K'awil's tomb , one of the richest ever found in the Maya world, containing 180 worked jade items in the form of bracelets, anklets, necklaces and earplugs, and delicately incised bones, including the famous carving depicting deities paddling canoes bearing the dead to the underworld.
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