Hiking Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve

Don't put away those hiking boots and machete just yet. Peten offers yet another expedition, the El Mirador Trail, that takes you bush-whacking through the center of the tropical forest of the Peten to the remote Maya ruins of El Mirador.

Hidden in the forest of northern Peten, El Mirador is a preclassic city over 2,000 years old. Archaeologists speculate that El Mirador was the first major organized settlement of the Maya. The site is enormous — experts estimate that tens of thousands of people inhabited the city of El Mirador. To date El Mirador holds the largest concentration of religious and communal structures recorded in the history of the Maya. Among these buildings sits the temple El Tigre, the largest temple ever built by the Maya — over eighteen stories tall with a base the size of three football fields. The extensive site lies for the most part unexcavated and occupies over sixteen square kilometers of primary forest.

The journey to El Mirador is a five-day expedition. The trail is challenging but well worth the physical sacrifice of comfort and ease. Although horses carry packs and provisions, individuals should be mentally and physically prepared for the challenge.