Beautiful Falls (not the kind that make it onto AFV)

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After much deliberation we decided to head to popular Agua Azul as a day trip on our own from Palenque. We caught the colectivo on 5a. Poniente Sur (Prof. Ydalio Huerta) for MXN35 (the better colectivo was MXN40). It took about an hour to get to the stop for the falls, then hopped a taxi for MXN20 down the road to the falls. During the taxi ride there were two toll booths where it cost MXN15 and MXN40 respectively to continue. These were manned by the local/indigenous population who the government had historically tried to kick off the land. It seems like they would have had ties to the Zapatistas, a militaristic group set to defend the indigenous populations rights and way of life.

The falls themselves were beautiful with 4 different places to go swimming. We walked up, and up, and up; going well past the last public swimming zone. We passed some police on the way just chilling in their truck which seems to happen a lot. Eventually we reached a police shack that had a sign indicating that we couldn't go any further. We chatted with them extremely broken Spanish for a bit, with them saying how beautiful the rest of the river higher up was. It seemed to us that for a 'fee' they would let us pass. We didn't since there were no other people around and we weren't sure what kind of tension that might cause with the locals. We headed back to the highest pool for a swim. The water was fresh but bearable and Dan floated with the current down the that swim area, getting out before going over any falls. Then we sauntered down spending MXN8 on a cob of corn (should have been MXN10 but we only had a little change). The taxi was the same MXN20 and we ended up catching the MXN40 colectivo on the ride back to Palenque.

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