Due to safety concerns, traveling to Guatemala with children can be stressful. My Guatemala family travel tips below can help you plan an amazing visit to Tikal so you can enjoy the site without the stress.
There are no border fees to enter Guatemala.
When crossing from Belize to Guatemala, Belize charges a $40 BZ ($20 US) exit fee. There is NO fee to enter or exit Guatemala but many unscrupulous agents will tell you there is a 10 quetzales (about $1.35 US) immigration fee. They will then pocket the money. (Literally. They just put it into their pockets.) If you ask for a receipt they will typically drop it and let you go. We actually had our driver rip us off for this. (She insisted on taking our passports and “fees” to the border agent for us.) I was 100% aware of what she was doing but we were at her mercy since she wouldn’t drive us until we gave it to her. Since it was only about $5 US it wasn’t worth arguing but it was an uneasy feeling knowing our driver for the next hour and a half had essentially stolen from us.
Stay with your passport.
Many drivers will offer to (or insist on) taking your passport to the desk on the Guatemalan side to get it stamped for you. If you are with a tour group from Belize, usually the guide will do this for the entire van. That is completely fine. But our private driver had already proven that she was not trustworthy by charging us a bogus fee and watching her walk away with our passports made us extremely uneasy. On the way back, we all went with the driver to get our stamps.
Exchange money before your trip.
I calculated how many quetzales we would need for food and Tikal park tickets and ordered them from our bank before our trip. We were headed straight to Tikal and knew there were no ATMs along the way. There is also no official currency exchange location at the border. Yes, you can haggle with individual exchangers on either side of the border. But we don’t speak Spanish and the idea of having to know the rate, calculate a “good deal” and haggle with someone in another language just felt like a hassle we didn’t want to deal with. It was worth it to us to pay a small bank fee to avoid it.
Know what tickets you need for your entire stay at Tikal and buy them before entering the park.
Regular park tickets (for entrance from 6am to 6pm) cost 150 GTQ (children under 12 are free). If you’d like to come early for sunrise or stay late for sunset, you must buy additional tickets. Sunrise and sunset tickets are each an additional 100 GTQ. Tikal tickets are only sold at branches of Banrural Bank. There is a branch at the border and one at the main gate to the park. Note that the drive from the main gate to the actual park entrance is about 20 minutes. If you don’t buy your tickets at the first gate or decide that you need additional tickets (for an extra day or for sunrise or sunset tickets) you will have to return to the first gate to buy them. Also, if you plan to do a sunrise tour you must buy your tickets the day before since the branch at the park gate doesn’t open until 6am (after sunrise).
Bring a flashlight or headlamp.
The hotels in the park only have power for limited hours. In the evening and early morning, you will need a flashlight or headlamp to use in your room. Also, if you plan to do either the sunrise or the sunset tour, you will need to bring your own light. It is very dark in the jungle and there are no lights anywhere in the park.
Hire a guide that will bring you to and from the border.
The biggest stress of our trip was transportation to and from the border. We had trouble finding reputable private drivers and the ones we ended up with did not speak English. Safety is a concern on Guatemalan roads, making your driver even more important. Many highly regarded Tikal guides will pick you up from the border and take you back at the end of your trip. This would have eliminated so much stress from our trip and made it much more enjoyable.
