Travel from Black Rock Lodge to Tikal
After 3 amazing nights at Black Rock Lodge, we headed to Guatemala to visit Tikal. This was the stressful part of the trip – both the planning of our journey and the execution of the plan. I’ll write separately about safety concerns in Guatemala, but suffice it to say that this was in the back of our minds the entire trip.
Once we decided that we didn’t want to miss Tikal, we had to then decide between a day trip with an organized tour or an overnight stay. The day trips seemed like so much travel time. It worked out to be about a 10 hour trip with only 3.5 hours actually at the site. And those 3.5 hours would be in the middle of the day when it was hottest and most crowded.
So an overnight seemed like the way to go. We could arrive late afternoon and do a sunset tour and then take another tour early the next morning. Both tours would be when it was cooler, less crowded, and the wildlife was more active.
So the next decision was whether we paid a tour company for their overnight tour or did it ourselves. The math just didn’t work on the tour groups. At around $300 per person, I just couldn’t justify that expense for our family of four for only one night of our trip. Surely I could put together a visit for less than $1200.
I started piecing the trip together – I booked a room at the Tikal Inn (although later changed to Jungle Lodge) and scheduled our tours with Roxy Ortiz, a well-known archaeologist/naturalist/tour guide in the area. The missing piece was the transportation.
Because Belizean guides cannot guide or drive in Guatemala, the transportation had to be arranged in four segments – Black Rock Lodge to the border, the border to Tikal, Tikal back to the border, and the border to Belize City. I’m tired just writing that, let alone actually figuring out the logistics. I dove into my research.
Black Rock Lodge was actually able to arrange the first two steps for us so I was able to check those two legs off. After getting lots of quotes and talking to many different people, I ended up booking a private driver from Jaguar Inn to take us back to the border and then hired William’s Belize Shuttle to pick us up at the border and take us to the municipal airport.
So on paper it all looked good and didn’t seem too complicated. But as they say, the best laid plans…
The first segment was easy. We knew the Black Rock staff were amazing and their vehicles were reliable and safe. No worries there whatsoever. We unfortunately didn’t get Roque for this trip but had another friendly driver. He explained to us how they were not allowed to guide in Guatemala so they have a partnership with a Guatemalan guide. When guests from the lodge want to do a day trip to Tikal, the BRL guide takes them to the border where they meet the Guatemalan guide on the other side. The Guatemalan guide then drives the rest of the way and provides the tour, but the BRL guide stays with the group the whole time. This same guide was going to meet us at the border and provide our transportation to the Jungle Lodge.
The trip to the border was much quicker than I anticipated and we were there before we knew it. The BRL driver walked us into the building and showed us where to go to get our passports stamped and pay our exit fee. He looked around for the Guatemalan guide while we went through the line. He seemed a little confused when he came back and told us that their guide had sent his wife instead. He pointed to a lady in a purple shirt waiting for us outside. I was immediately uneasy with this change in plans. I was ok going with a trusted business partner of the lodge but hopping in a van with a stranger sent in his place didn’t sit well with me.
But we didn’t seem to have any other options and the BRL guide assured us that he knew her and it was ok to go with her. Unsure of what else to do, we walked out to meet her, only to discover that she didn’t speak any English. I could feel my stress level rising higher and higher. She loaded our bags into the van and we got inside. She indicated that she needed our passports and also asked for money. I had read that it is a common scam of the border agents to ask for a fee when you enter Guatemala. The country itself does not charge a fee but many of the agents ask for it and pocket the money. So I knew there was no fee. But here was our driver, holding our passports, and saying “40 quetzals” over and over. I tried to protest and said there was no fee but she insisted. “Si, 40 quetzals.” Since it amounted to a little over $5, I just gave it to her. It wasn’t about the money. It was knowing that we were about to embark on a journey with a woman who had just blatantly ripped us off. It was not a good feeling. We were completely at the mercy of a woman who I now did not trust.
So away she walked with our passports and 40 quetzals in her pocket. I felt so uncomfortable with her taking our passports but didn’t know what else to do. In retrospect one of us should have gone with her but we didn’t exactly feel comfortable splitting up either. Fortunately she came back with them after about 5 minutes. I checked each book to make sure they all had a stamp. Everything seemed to be in order.
I knew that you could only buy Tikal tickets at a Banrural Bank and that there was a branch at the border. I had read many people who recommended buying them there because the branch at the main park entrance could be closed or crowded. I tried to ask her if we could buy tickets there and she kept telling me no. I’m assuming it was either a communication issue or she didn’t realize you could buy them there. Regardless, it was clear we would not be getting them now. Since I knew we had one more chance to buy them, I chose not to worry about this particular point.
So we headed off on the hour and a half journey to Tikal. The roads started out fine but we quickly hit a stretch reminiscent of the road to Barton Creek Cave. Pot holes large and small covered the road and our driver swerved from one side of the road to the other to find the best route. I was worried that the whole trip would be like that but thankfully it only lasted about fifteen minutes.
We made two unexpected stops. First she pulled over randomly (and quite suddenly) to the left side of the road in Rio Dulce and pointed excitedly out the window. We figured out that she was showing us Lake Izabal, the largest lake in Guatemala. A little further down the road, she stopped for gas at a very isolated and rundown gas station. RB needed to go to the bathroom so he and Blair got out of the van. A few minutes later JB decided he had to go too so he followed after them. Our driver thought it would be funny to pretend to leave them. She turned to me, smiled and said “adios!” and started to drive away across the parking lot. I suppose the fact that she thought I would find that funny must have meant that I was hiding my stress well.
She did not, of course, leave my family behind. They joined back up with us and we continued on our way. As we were getting closer to Tikal, she made a call on her cell phone and then handed the phone to me. It was her daughter, who was acting as a translator for us. She asked what tickets we needed to buy and made sure that our tour plans matched up with the tickets we thought we needed. Since the park entrance was our last chance to buy tickets, I appreciated that our driver wanted to make sure we got the right tickets. We needed our tickets for both today and tomorrow, as there are no tickets for sale at the site entrance and returning back here tomorrow would take close to an hour round trip.
The driver’s daughter confirmed the tickets we needed and told me the cost. She relayed the information back to her mom, who went with Blair to go buy the tickets. While they were gone, the boys continued to read while I took in our surroundings. It suddenly occurred to me that she had left the van running and the doors unlocked. I was contemplating how uncomfortable that made me feel when the van door slid open next to me. Fortunately it was just a few kids trying to sell us park maps and they closed the door again after a simple “no, gracias”. But I was very relieved when I saw Blair come back around the building. When I asked him how it went, he said “the dozen police officers with machine guns were very reassuring.” I wondered again what we were getting ourselves into.
But we had our tickets and were ready for the last leg of our journey. They raised the gate to let us through and we were finally inside Tikal. The boys enjoyed all the signs for different animal crossings, although they were disappointed that we didn’t actually see any crossing. Finally we arrived at the parking lot and main entrance to the park. From here, all three hotels (Jaguar Inn, Tikal Inn, and Jungle Lodge) were within walking distance. She turned up the driveway for Jungle Lodge and they checked our names off the register and let us through. We were at our destination at last.
So while the drive there did not go exactly as planned, we arrived safely and on-time. The boys read their books the entire time and seemed completely oblivious to our stress. Being unable to communicate with your driver is challenging to say the least. I think that is what was the most stressful, especially in a situation where you are already concerned about safety. It would have been nice to have been walked through the steps – now we have to take your passports over here to get stamped, this part of the drive will take X amount of time, these are the park tickets you’ll need and where we will buy them. Being able to discuss those things would have gone a long way towards making me feel more comfortable.
Travel from Tikal to Belize City Municipal Airport
We had a somewhat similar experience on the way back. Since the Jungle Lodge had quoted a price to the border that was 60% higher than anyone else I spoke with, I ended up booking a private shuttle from the Jaguar Inn. For some reason I felt like driving in a hotel shuttle would feel safer. We had originally been told that we should meet at the Jaguar Inn but since we had all our luggage I emailed them to ask if they could just pick us up at the Jungle Lodge and they agreed. We waited outside at the set time and nobody showed. (Although ironically, the woman who had driven us there the day before drove up in her van and tried to give us a ride back. Since we had already prepaid for the Jaguar Inn shuttle, we did not accept.)
Finally a run-down blue van pulled up to the hotel lobby. This was not an official hotel shuttle but somehow I just knew it was for us. The driver got out, came around to us, and pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his back pocket with my name scribbled on it. I guess that was as official as it was going to get. We all piled into the van.
The driver was an older gentleman and the van seemed even older. The AC didn’t work very well and I wondered briefly if the vehicle was up for the trip. And as I expected, the driver did not speak English. He seemed nice enough and I presumed he knew where we were going. At this point we just had to trust the process.
On the way out of the park, a guard gave the driver a slip of paper with a time on it. I had read about this before the trip; it was a way to enforce the speed limit. All vehicles get a piece of paper with their starting time on it. The guard at the other end checks the time at the exit. If anyone gets to the park exit too quickly, they got a speeding ticket. It was a really clever way to keep people from speeding.
Speeding was definitely not an issue with our driver and he passed the time test with flying colors. Soon we were back on the road in Guatemala. And soon he was making unscheduled stops too. He pulled over into a driveway on the side of the road with a big gate across it. He said “un minuto” and hopped out of the van, and again we were left in an unlocked, running vehicle. We watched as he walked down the driveway and a little girl ran up and handed him a bag. He went back up the driveway and removed something from a box next to the gate and put it into the bag. He then got back in the van, said something we didn’t understand, and put the bag on the seat next to him. I’m going to just assume it was some type of fruit.
We continued our way to the border and I was glad to recognize a lot of the areas we were passing through. Again, not being able to communicate with the driver was stressful, and I was happy to have some reassurance that we were actually going where we were supposed to. We made it to the border and it was really busy and hectic on the Guatemalan side. There was some confusion about what was supposed to happen next. We knew we needed our passports stamped on the Guatemala side before going across. Since our driver on the way had taken our passports to get stamped for us, we assumed he would do the same. This time we wised up a little and decided Blair would go with him. He seemed slightly confused about the whole thing. The boys and I stayed in the (unlocked, running) van and they came back a few minutes. Blair said the agent told him we all needed to be there so we all hopped out, got in line, and got our passports stamped. It was super easy but definitely made me wonder how the whole thing had gone down without us on our entrance into the country.
We went back to the (unlocked, running) van and gathered our luggage. Our driver pointed us to the border crossing and we went on our way. We crossed the border and then entered the building in Belize where we got on line to have our passports stamped again. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when we were back in Belize and I saw our driver waiting for us on the other side.
Of course, the adventure didn’t end there. We still had to get to the municipal airport in Belize City for our flight to Ambergris Caye. But being back in the more familiar area of Belize and with a driver who spoke English, I felt like we were home free.
Our driver was really friendly and we loaded ourselves and our stuff into his van. He offered to take us to an ATM to get some cash and to stop for lunch on the way. We were having a pleasant trip when all of the sudden it started smelling like fuel. We were passing through a small town so I figured we were just driving by something that smelled. But we got back out onto the highway and the smell was clearly going with us. I could tell our driver was getting nervous and finally he said we had to pull over.
Sure enough, the van was smoking and had a fuel leak. It smelled so strong. We all got out on the side of the road and let it cool down and air out while the driver called his boss. Of all the things I had worried about in our drive to Guatemala, it had never once occurred to me to worry that our van might break down. I couldn’t imagine if this had happened on that leg of our trip – being stuck on the side of the road in Guatemala (a country where crime is a big concern), unable to communicate with the driver to know what was going on. I was immediately grateful that this had happened while we were in Belize. Our driver was professional and handled it really well. And knowing that he was a part of a large company with dozens of vans was reassuring.
But it is possible to be frustrated at the same time you are grateful that it wasn’t worse. We had gotten up around 5am and this was already a super long day for us. Being stuck on the side of the road in the sweltering heat certainly wasn’t making the day go better. We still had an hour or more to drive, plus a flight to Ambergris, and then a drive to the hotel there. Plus we were starving. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, we were all out of snacks, and this added time looked like it was going to cost us our lunch stop. At this point all we wanted was to get to the next hotel where we could have something to eat (and drink) and cool down in the pool. We were so close yet so far away.
About 30 minutes later, a new van arrived. As frustrating as it was that this happened, I was impressed that they got another van to us so quickly, especially because it was Easter Sunday. We transferred all our stuff, said goodbye and good luck to our original driver, and continued on our way.
We arrived at the airport with plenty of time, but some of my goodwill towards the van company was erased when they tried to charge us more than the agreed upon price. We had just spent 30 minutes broken down on the side of the road with our kids. I was expecting at least a token discount. So when instead he tried to charge us more, we just about lost it. He called his boss who confirmed the higher price. I frantically went inside to get a wi-fi connection so I could pull up my email confirmation (which in retrospect I realized I had a printed copy of in my bag) and prove to him what our price should be. In the end he honored our original price but the damage was done. We had kept a good attitude all along but trying to overcharge us when they really probably owed us a discount was the last straw. We were officially done with this travel day.
So very long story short, our travel between Belize and Guatemala could have been smoother. If I had it to do over again, I would have hired a Tikal guide who would pick us up from and take us back to the border. That way the stressful legs of the trip would have been with a fully vetted person who spoke English. I don’t regret going, but boy was I relieved when it was over.
