Maya Sites Travel Services - 4 night to Tikal, Yaxha, Uaxactun, Topoxte

One of the most famous and beautiful of Maya sites, Tikal’s massive and steep pyramids (one is over 200 feet high) loom above the lush jungle of the Peten where one can observe spider and howler monkeys and numerous bird species such as toucans, parrots and macaws in the towering ceiba trees.

With a history beginning at 600 BC when farmers settled in the high ground above the swamps of Lake Peten, at its peak Tikal was home to an estimated 100,000 people and the site has over 3,000 structures within a six square mile area. Well preserved glyphic texts tell of a dynamic written historical record spanning over 1,800 years, including a very old long-count inscription date of 292 AD. For your maximum enjoyment of Tikal, climb the highest pyramid, Temple 4, and get a birds-eye view of the site above the jungle canopy.

An important part of the history of how Tikal became one of the great empires of the ancient Maya world was its conflicts with nearby Uaxactun. Tikal and Uaxactun are so close to each other (just 12 miles apart) that they engaged in a long period of struggle for domination of the region. To quote Schele & Freidel in A Forest of Kings: "Their competition ... was resolved violently in AD 378 by means of an innovative type of warfare we call Tlaloc-Venus war, or sometimes simply "star wars".

This new method of warfare was borrowed from the central Mexico civilizations and had a great impact on the wars between the kingdoms of the Peten region. Again, to quote Schele & Freidel: "With the advent of this new kind of warfare, a new concept was incorporated into the Maya culture: the idea of empire". Unlike former wars that were ritualized combats for personal glory and to capture captives to sacrifice to the gods, this new warfare had much higher stakes -- if you lost the war you lost your kingdom.

Also near Tikal are the Maya ruins of Yaxhá ("Green Water"). On the banks of a beautiful lagoon, in ancient times Yaxhá was the third largest Maya city in the Peten (after El Mirador & Tikal) and has an unusual layout for the region. Its twin pyramid complexes, 9 acropolis', plazas and more than 500 structures are connected by sacbés (ancient elevated roads) in a manner similar to Maya sites in the Yucatan. The views of the jungle from the 30 meter high Structure 216 are breathtaking. From the lagoon you can also take a boat trip to the nearby island ruins at Topoxte ("Ramon Tree"). Topoxte also has unusual architectural features, including columns that are much like those found at Chichen Itza.