“Jaguar Crossing” Street Sign in Tikal National Park, Guatemala
It’s not every day we see a road sign that warns drivers to “Beware of Jaguar” or “Jaguar Crossing”. We spotted this sign while driving through Tikal National Park in Guatemala and had to pull over to take a photo.
At first, our driver thought it was odd that we wanted to take a photo of a street sign, but later agreed that he would probably take a similar photo in Canada if he saw street signs for ”Moose Crossing” or “Bear Crossing”.
We asked our driver if he had ever seen a jaguar in the park, hoping he would give us a positive response.
“No, I’ve never seen a jaguar in the wild”, he replied with a slight grin. “But they typically don’t come out in the daytime anyways”. We got the impression he’d been asked this question a lot from his foreign passengers.
We also asked the staff at our jungle lodge and they gave a similar answer. We questioned the reasoning for putting up such a sign, given the fact that these people travel the remote road daily and have never witnessed the elusive cat.
Nevertheless, it was a fun reminder that we were very far from home!
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What is the most unusual street sign you’ve seen? Care to share a link to a photo if you have one?
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Cameron and Nicole Wears are a Canadian couple and newbie parents living in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia. A passion for travel and outdoor adventure has taken them to over 65 countries & territories on 6 continents in the past 7 years. Consider following us via 
Last time I was in Canada, I saw a similar sign but with the figure of a hockey player. They told me they don’t often come out during the day either.
What? Jaguars in Guatemala? I have never even heard such a thing.
I love finding funny signs like this.
We developing quite the collection of animal road signs from our travels – its a fun photo collection.
There are jaguars, but an actual sighting is rare at best!
Most definitely a reminder that you are away from home. I guess it’s no different really than the bear signs in Canada’s national parks.
Indeed, it’s similar to Moose and Bear signs in Canada (but we’ll stop to take photos of those signs too – we’re just dorky like that!)
All the wildlife there is awesome.. its so amazing how at Tikal, Guatemala is getting conservation right:)
It’s definitely good to see Guatemala taking the steps towards wildlife conservation.
We love the howler monkeys – incredible how loud those small animals can get!
Whenever you see these signs it’s a sure thing you won’t see the wildlife in question! Kiwis in NZ, Badgers where I live in England and Kangaroos in Victoria. No, thinking about we narrowly missed a roo! Great website, keep up the good work. Si
Thanks! True, everytime we see one of those signs we rarely see the animals. We saw a pengiun crossing sign in New Zealand but never spotted one
Love the different animal road signs in each country! I remember that one with the jaguar in Guatemala – but we drove by too fast to take a photo
There was also a sign for “Snake Crossing” in Tikal, which was kinda strange
Its funny what kind of sings you come across overseas, I saw the penguin and kiwi crossing signs in NZ as well, and camel and wombat signs in Australia. They always make for interesting photos
We kept seeing the penguin crossing in NZ too, but never saw one
Next time.
I love seeing interesting signs like this! For a Canadian one that beats the classic moose or deer (or buffalo where I am now), there’s a picture of an amazing sign from Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta of a deer attacking a person because the deer there have become particularly aggressive… http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2011/06/10/calgary-waterton-lakes-park-deer.html
That’s great! We remember that about Banff too, they are not scared of people.
If you want to see a real Jaguar: the photo of one I took in Brazil was the first post I put on my travel blog.
Absolutelly amazing experience.
Michael