Yaxha Archeological Site, Actún Kan Regional Park
When I was in Australia, that was the first time I changed timezones on a bus ride, but it was in the same country. This time, I was staying in the same timezone, crossing the border between Belize and Guatemala, which turned out to be an even easier process than crossing the border between Mexico and Belize. It was a short ride to the border, and then I stood in line for a few minutes, paid the exit fee, got into another line, presented my passport, walked for a little bit more, got into a third line, and very quickly I found myself in Guatemala. Another shuttle was waiting there. The ride to Flores, my first destination in Guatemala, took a couple of hours, with a brief stop at an ATM to take out some cash, and that was it. My Guatemalan adventure has started.
Hearing a bit too much about Tikal, and burnt by the tours I’ve done in Mexico, I looked for another place to visit. There weren’t too many options, and the cheaper one was Yaxha. I asked a couple of different tour agencies on the island, and the price was pretty much the same. As meals weren’t included in the price, I bought some food before getting to the van.
Everyone got on board, our guide introduced himself (in both English and Spanish), and we embarked on a two hours ride to Yaxha, which included a stop along the way for a last chance to buy any food or snacks. On the way to the site, it turned out that Yaxha is not a national park, one of several sites within the national park. There was also an option to take a boat ride to another site, thus making the tour longer, but since only three people in the group wanted to do it, it was decided to skip it.
We paid the entry fee, and the tour has started. There were two older women in the group who didn’t speak English, and as such the guide gave us the introduction to the site in English and then in Spanish, rather than splitting the group into two (and having an additional guide), which to me felt like an inefficient way of doing it. And he did so with most of his explanation.
Although it did make things longer, there was a bigger issue- Our guide didn’t really give much explanation on his own. He was knowledgeable, and had quite a few things to say, but for the most part he only said something when one of the group members asked a question. As we walked around, I heard some general things about the Maya, and the north of Guatemala, but almost nothing about Yaxha, or at least nothing good enough to stick in my head.
The site wasn’t big. There were some ruins that we could walk around, and even climb a couple of them, but for the most part we just walked around in the jungle, listening to insects, birds, monkeys, and some other creatures.
The whole thing could’ve been done in under ninety minutes, maybe even less than an hour, especially without a guide, and that was a problem, as we were supposed to climb up to a viewpoint and watch the sunset, which I didn’t care for. To be fair, it was marketed as a sunset tour, but that seemed to be the only time during the day any shuttles were heading the Yaxha, so I didn’t have a choice in the matter. Also, we left relatively early in the day, which made me expect more. Instead, my impressions from it were that our guide did his best to stretch an hour and a half tour over more than four hours. Even then, we got to the sunset viewpoint early, and had to stay there for nearly an hour, before the guide said it was time to go back to the shuttle. Some people wanted to stay for a bit longer, to have a better chance of seeing the sunset, but I was too bored and headed straight down.
After getting back to Flores and resting, I wanted to go over to San Miguel on the other side of lake Petén Itzá. I found it a bit confusing to find the boats that go there, and get a normal price, but eventually I found and within minutes I was in San Miguel, where there was a viewpoint and a museum. Although the day started quite sunny, by the time I was on dry land the skies were covered in clouds.
At first I tried to make my way toward the museum, but I found myself struggling to get there. Looking at the map near the boats, there was another ruins site in the area, although I failed to locate that one as well.
And so, I headed toward the viewpoint of Rey Canek, which wasn’t easy. The wind started to pick up, and I had to consult the smartphone quite a bit in order to try and find the way that leads to the viewpoint. As I went up I also asked someone where to go, and he kindly pointed the way.
I left him behind me, and quickly got to a construction site as the rain started to fall. I stayed there for a little while, and although the rain didn’t stop, it wasn’t strong, and I figured I should still go to the viewpoint while I’m in the area. That turned out to be quite a bad plan. As I continued up the path, the rain got stronger, and I had no shelter other than my umbrella.
It wasn’t a long road, and I have no idea how close I actually got to the viewpoint, but I haven’t made it all the way. Eventually the weather conditions were too much for me, and I headed back to the construction site, where I sought shelter along with a few of the site’s workers. I stayed there until the rain slowed down, and then headed back to the boats, and took another short ride back to the island.
One more place I was interested in visiting in the area was Actún Kan Regional Park, where there was an option to do some cave exploration. Before I could do that though, I had to move into another hostel, as the first one I checked into lost all power due to a storm. After checking in and getting some food, I started to chat with another backpacker in the hostel, who expressed his interest in joining me.
It wasn’t too far away, but we still decided to take a tuktuk on the way over there, for convenience and to save some time. When we got there, we had two options, a short route through the cave, which was self-guided, and a long tour, which required an additional payment for a guide. We were also informed that parts of the long tour would be crawling on the floor, and as such long pants were recommended (but not mandatory), which we didn’t have. After a bit of deliberation, we decided to do the long tour. We got an overview of the area, helmets with headlamps, and then our guide introduced himself. He only spoke Spanish, and neither me or my companion were fluent, although he understood quite a bit more than me.
After a quick walk from the reception area, we were at the cave entrance. We started going down, looking around us at the different rocks, stalactites, and stalagmites formations within, with some explanation for our guide. My companion translated as much of the explanations as he could, but it didn’t take long for him to get overwhelmed. There were numbered signs along the cave, pointing at specific formations that were deemed more interesting, and arrows pointing the way, which had a correlation to the map at the reception. As we had a guide, we didn’t really need to consult the map at any point.
We kept descending deeper into the cave, and I placed myself between the guide and my companion. The headlamp on my helmet turned out to be very weak, so it was challenging to see anything with it. As we walked around, following the short tour route, the guide said several times that we need to have some imagination in order to see the formations in the cave in the way the signs described them, which reminded me of the Mammoth Cave in Mexico. Unfortunately, some of those formations were covered in graffiti, and quite a lot of it, which I was surprised by. From what I could understand, it was part of the reason the long tour required a guide, to try and protect the deeper parts of the cave from similar damage.
Eventually we got to the end of the short tour route. Up until that point it was pretty easy and comfortable to walk around the Actún Kan cave, but that changed instantly. We had to crouch and carefully move around a small space for a minute to emerge on the side, where we had to climb up a steep and slippery section, which took me a few attempts. There were some changes in elevation, we crouched some more in sections, but overall it wasn’t too difficult, although it was definitely a challenge.
And then time was time to lay flat and crawl. And that was when I had a flashback. Around fourth grade, I went on a school trip to do some cave exploration, which included crouching, jumping into complete darkness, and crawling. During that trip, I had a moment of panic, but thankfully I had some friends to calm me down and help me survive that cave.
All those years later, I was about to crawl, and the fear was there again. But I knew there was a guide in front of me, and another traveler behind me, so I was safe. I was talking to my companion while crawling, more or less describing my progress as I went forward slowly, until I made it to the other end and could stand up again. It was a relief to be able to stand up, and after my companion made it, we kept going with the tour.
At some point our guide stopped us, and I had no idea if it was a random decision to stop there, or if it was a specific spot which was essential for enhancing the experience. He mentioned something about the Maya performing some rituals, but again, I had no idea I had no idea if he was saying some general things, or if the Mayan people were in that very cave at some point. After his explanation, he instructed us to sit down and turn off the headlamps. For several minutes we sat in complete darkness, listening to water dripping down for an unknown location. The novelty of it quickly wore off, and I got bored of just sitting there and doing nothing.
Thankfully, it didn’t take long before we turned on the healamps again, got up, and resumed the tour. We were crouching again, going through tight spaces, and crawling on fours, and then we started ascending. We got up one final set of stairs, and we were out of the cave, in a different location to the starting point. We spotted a few construction workers who had just finished their work for the day, and they kindly offered us a ride to the main road, from which me and my companion could simply walk back to Flores.