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Published: June 24th 2010
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We arrived in Palenque delirious from exhaustion. It was our longest bus haul so far and it took much from us; 31 hours of precious time, 300 hard fought Australian dollars and 1 iPod we left on one of the buses. We tried to get the iPod back but the bus company would have none of it, “No habla ingles”, damn. A very frustrating 48 hours. Somehow we found that we were behind the 8 ball a little when it came to time left in Central America, thus the catalyst that brought us to Palenque in such a manner, grumpy, hot, sweaty, smelly, and quite a bit lighter in the wallet. We found our accommodation and decided to take the day off for rest. We actually saw a family of howler monkeys kipped out on the tree next to our dorm room. Mumma, Papa, and baby in the middle, a nice little reward for us after such a massive bus trip.
I woke the next morning, excited to see the ruins of Palenque. I made my way to Coley’s bunk to wake her, poor girl had been savaged yet again by a single mosquito that stalked her all night and
the extra joy of not having a fan and sleeping in a pool of sweat, she hadn’t slept a wink. We had a quick breakfast of cereal and picked up a taxi collective for 10 pesos ($1 AU) each and headed to the great Mayan ruins of Palenque.
The day was so humid and hot, poor Coley was having a hard time of it, I was having trouble myself. We hopped from tree to tree trying to get as much shade as possible. We walked up the path and the first pyramid came to view, almost as though the thick jungle parted and presented us with a vision of ancient Mayan past. We were blown away; these pyramids were in such good nick. The first pyramid was full of people already so we headed to the second pyramid which had a tunnel going into the center of it. Coley and I were so excited, as you have already read in the Mexico blog we were so bummed when we couldn’t enter the pyramids of Teotihuacán. Turns out that the internal tunnels of the pyramid all lead to tombs.
The temple of inscriptions was closed to tourists while we
were there, we didn’t mind too much, it meant we could get great photos with no other tourists in them. We moved onto the palace, this building would have been so brilliant in it’s time; we walked through the arcades and tunnels and could only imagine the glory of the structure back then.
We made sure we climbed every pyramid and felt every skinny step (for some reason these ancient cultures use tall skinny steps, we often asked each other how many deaths would have occurred running up and down these immense pyramids? Surely many a slave came toppling down after missing a step.) By the end of our visit we were dripping in sweat, we loved the ruins but the heat reflecting of the mass of stone became too much for us and we retreated to the cool of the trees. We also found out that there are hundreds more temples hidden in the jungle. We would have loved to ventured in but we were drained. We needed a holiday in our holiday, hellooooo Belize and Caye Caulker.
Unfortunately all the photos you see in this blog were stolen off the internet since somebody pinched our camera....
but at least the pics will give you an idea...
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