Updated     29 January 2012

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How to get to and from Carmelita by bus.

Note that currently it appears that the family run organization calling itself the cooperativa requires that all guides and arrieros be from the village. If you are planning to just hike in yourself,  there are some credible accounts of such people being given the option of being sent back or hiring a guide.

Read the best current assessment of the present situation.

Carmelita, Guatemala, is where you will generally start out on foot or on mule if you want to see the Maya ruins of El Mirador and Nakbé without paying for a helicopter ride. With improvement in the trail now following the ancient causeway from Tintal,  Carmelita is now 63 kilometers from El Mirador and 65 from Nakbé, and it is the closest community to these and many other ruins in the Mirador Basin  Since there are only around 16 or so kilometers distance between El Mirador and Nakbé, it is good to see both if you can spare one extra day.  Also, it is not very far out of the way back from Nakbé to see the ruins at Wakná, but you had better arrange with the guide to see that ahead of time.

The village has two comedors, (one with very basic rooms to rent), and cold drinks and solar electricity. According to Rough Guide,  one and a half kilometers before the village is Campamento Nakbé with basic but clean shelters with hammock and netting and campsites as well.  I arrived in Carmelita in January 2010 early for an arranged trip to find that both comedors in town on a Friday night only had eggs, frijoles and tortillas on the menu.  Guess what was for breakfast.  If you can stand that regimen, by all means come in out of the blue or call Patricia (see below) to arrange a meal at her comedor.

 This could be a very good way to go if there are only one or two going and at least one person can communicate in Spanish. By calling ahead and arranging to go on a particular day and arranging a room with them, then a person would just hop one of the buses from Santa Elena to Carmelita. Then there would be an early start  for El Tintal and Mirador the next day. Had either of my groups done it this way, we could have avoided what we called the "Death March" the first time and the "Night Ride" the next one. There would have been no rush back on the last day, because the bus does not leave Carmelita until the next morning at 5 am.