Mayan Adventure - Palenque

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Thanks for all your messages!

Back to the trip
12 February - 13 February

So we were up early again to get back on the ADO. This time we were travelling all day through Tobasco to Palenque in the state of Chiapas. Chiapas is known to be the most wealthy state in Mexico for resourses but the people here are among the poorest in the country. The area is home to a terrorist group, largely because of the wealth not reaching the people in this state and they they have hade many skirmishes with the Mexican goverment. But we were looking forward to it nonetheless! We arrived at 6pm in the small village and got straight on a mini bus to our hotel in the jungle! It was a lovely little place we had our own Mayan style condo and were surrounded by jungle and lots of bugs!

Dinner took place at Salvadors (in his garage!). Salvador was a big jolly Mexican (not Mexicant) tour leader by day - entertainer/chef/bar man at night! What a great chef, Dan had fish cooked inside a cactus leaf on the BBQ, I had the biggest shrimps (prawns we have become Americanized!) i´d ever seen injected with garlic then cooked in garlic oil and butter absolutely the best shrimps i´d ever had and Dan´s fish wasn´t bad either! Dinner was followed by learning how to make a michelada - basically a chillied beer, and some other stuff! Then Tequila, tequila and more tequila. We paid Salvador and then had the dentist chair treatment with you guessed it tequila poured down our troats until we could take no more! This was not the cheap stuff either! 100 anos really good tequila! Walking home was interesting, it was amazing to look at the stars we saw a shooting star as well! and somehow our tour leader ended up in a ditch (the next day i was told that i had bumped him in the ditch i just thought he ran out of road and ended up there!)

Next day some of us were not too good but at 8 am and tequila the night before who would be! We still headed off to the Palenque ruins with our guide. These were stunning the sun was shining there were very few people and it was set in the middle of the jungle, a tiny amount of the ruins have been restored, and most lay hidden in the jungle by saber trees. We saw our first howler monkey and although we had very little time here we still managed to cover most of the site of Palenque!
By 12pm we were on another ADO on our way to San Cristobel.

Again we both would of liked another day here at least! But we definately got a taster of the friendly people, ruins, and jungle.

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