This country´s northernmost department (like a state or province), Petén, is also not only its largest, but home to most of its ancient Mayan archaeological sites. Tikal is by far the most famous, but others deserve to be better known, and none more so than Yaxhá, the region's third largest city - which some like just as much, and which you'll likely have practically to yourself, with only howler monkeys and perhaps a small smattering of other visitors for company. 

Sometimes included in tour packages with Tikal, a 30-kilometre drive away, Yaxhá's origins stretch back to 1000 BCE and became the capital of a kingdom covering nearly 240 square kilometres (over 90 sq. miles), with a peak population of 42,000. Like other major anicent Mayan cities, it had been long abandoned to the dense jungle - for possibly centuries - by the time the Spanish invaders first ventured into Petén in 1525.

Read more in our post Yaxha, Another of Guatemala´s Mystical, Magical Mayan Sites.

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