Palenque (31st March - 1st April)

Our bus left Puerto Escondido at about 2.30pm and from there it was a 5 hour ride to Salina Cruz where we then had a two hour wait before catching another bus to Villahamosa, which took a further 8 hours, and then finally a 2 hour trip to Palenque town, arriving about 8am the following morning. Palenque Town isn´t too amazing so we stayed about 5km down the road towards the ruins in a place called Margarita and Ed´s, which is set in the jungle.

Margarita and Ed´s was pretty alright. We had a little cabana with bathroom, hot water, toilet roll, towels, soap and a good fan, and it was half the price of anywhere else we´d stayed recently. The hotel is grouped together with a number of other hotels, campsites, restaurants and bars which was ok but meant that it was pretty noisy at night.

We couldn´t get into our room straight away so grabbed some breaky then sorted ourselves out. We had a few hours kip as we hadn´t slept that well on the buses (largely due to some guy snoring!) then relaxed for the rest of the day sorting out the blog etc. That dinner we ate at one of the restaurants near by (Don Mucho´s), which did very good pasta and pizzas and then had an early night.

The following day we got up at the crack of dawn to head into the reserve and towards the ruins. We knew the ruins themselves didn´t open until 8am but the reserve actually opened at 6am and we were told that it was a good 5km walk to get to the ruins so we got up at 5.30am and headed off, hoping to see some wildlife along the way (we´d heard that there were loads of howler monkey´s about and also a lot of bird life). Unfortunately we didn´t see too much wildlife and after about 45mins walk we reached a kind of check point where they wouldn´t let us past until 8am!! We thought this was pretty ridiculous as plenty of vans full of people were going through, but they were adamant that we weren´t allowed to carry on. So we waited about 15mins and were thinking of returning to the hotel when a collectivo (van-taxi that picks people up) stopped and the guards let us jump on board. It was a 5min drive down the road before we were dropped off outside the ruins! Nothing was open so we hung around until a little restaurant opened up for breaky. We eventually got into the ruins about 8.15am.

The ruins were essentially pretty much as we´d seen elsewhere in Mexico except they were set in the jungle which made a very impressive backdrop. Palenque was occupied from 100BC until AD900 peaking from 600-700 AD under the rule of Pakal. The ruins cover some 15 sq km but only a few have been properly excavated and are accessible to the public. One thing that really surprised us was the fact that everything you see in the city was built without metal tools, pack animals or even the wheel. We really wanted to look around at our own pace so we didn´t get a guide, which obviously had its pros and cons. We didn´t learn as much about the place as we had at Mont Alban and Teotihuacan but we did have time to look at the birds and take in the scenery. Some of the birds were absolutely stunning and there were also loads of parrots flitting about amongst the canopy.

While grabbing a snack near the entrance we were approached by a group of Mexican students who asked if they could have a photo with us. They were there with their language school and think they may have been practicing their English on us. They were really friendly and we ended up giving them our blog address.

We spent most of the day here before walking back through the reserve, stopping along the way to visit the museum that was very informative, if a little repetitive at times.

We arrived back at the cabana mid afternoon and while Dani caught up on her journal, Dan went for a stroll in the jungle to see what birds he could find. We both saw a Collared Aracari, which is basically a toucan to everybody else, though we couldn´t get a photo of it.

After some dinner at Don Mucho´s it was time to hit the road again. We grabbed a taxi into town at about 8pm (after some confusion over the time….we had forgotten to put our clocks forward!) where we updated our blog for an hour or two before catching the 10.55pm (which turned out to be 12.30am) bus for Tulum.

Not sure if you´ve noticed but we haven´t had as many photos recently which is largely because we haven´t been able to upload the photos from Dani´s camera for our entire time in Mexico. Needless to say, we´ll get them on asap….there´s some good bird ones!

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