Back in Mexico

---

This entry was written sitting on the beach sipping on a coconut!

The route towards the Mexican border involved a stop over in the Guatemalan city of Quetzaltenango, or better known by its Mayan name of Xela. The place has a nice main plaza but other than that it seems your normal Guatemalan city. In all our time in Guatemala we hadn´t really had any genuine "chicken bus" experiences, so we decided to bite the bullet and catch a series of them to the border. "Chicken buses" are old American school buses jazzed up with a "pimp my ride" style paint job and a variety of fairy lights and religious disco stickers. They are, however, most famous for the amount of people, livestock and giant bundles of corn you can pack onto one bus.

The first leg of the journey from Xela involved our first chicken bus crash. It wasn´t serious and no one was hurt but the bus or car weren´t going anywhere. So, we jumped on a passing bus a few minutes later and continued our journey with the conductor climbing all over the bus, whistling from the roof when it was 'safe' to overtake on blind corners on winding mountain roads. The border crossing was painless but we immediately noticed the difference in wealth between these 2 countries. The collectivos in Mexico suddenly became swanky, air-conditioned American vans. Another couple of taxi rides later and we reached the city of San Cristobal.

This has probably been the most attractive city we have visited so far. Similar to Antigua with it's colonial architecture but with more brightly coloured buildings giving it a true Mexican flavour. With lack of time left being a real issue, our sight-seeing turned into a military operation. A very full day was spent walking around the city, visiting churches, artesan markets and a museum on Mayan culture and medicine including a graphic video on how women give birth and the associated rituals using live chickens and coca-cola.

From here we headed north to the town of Palenque. We decided to stay outside the town in the jungle, closer to the ruins for what our guide book said would be a spiritual experience, but turned out to be more like a cheesy holiday camp complete with 'wacky' overly cheerful waiters! We took a day trip to a series of waterfalls in the area. The first stop was Misol-Ha a 30m waterfall where it's possible to walk behind, including a little cave with water pouring out that you could climb into. Next was Agua Clara, with an 'Indiana Jones' style suspension bridge over opaque, jade coloured water. Our final destination was Agua Azul where we stayed longer enabling us to climb to the top of the waterfall.
The main reason for visiting Palenque however, was to see the Mayan ruins of the same name. Unfortunately, we were misinformed about the opening time and ended up waiting for an hour and a half to get in! Suffice to say Karen wasn't feeling particlarly spiritul at this point either.

Palenque combines the jungle setting of Tikal with the artwork and story of Copan, although not on the same magnitude as either. Some of the architecture here is different with oriental style roof combs on the tops of pyramids. There are also plenty of water courses running through the site. Most impressive is a series of tiered bathing pools amongst cascading waterfalls. Also facinating, was the museum which contained the artifacts found in all the tombs; jade masks, jewellery and highly detailed ceramics.

We left Palenque in the midst of a tropical storm to make a beeline to the Mexican surf capital of Puerto Escondido, to dose up on sunshine and remind ourselves what a proper beach looks like before we get back to the UK!

---