Backpacking, Part II

When Ester and I got to Palenque, we stayed at a place called El Panchán. When you first enter, there are a few open air restaurants covered in tents, with 4 different sleeping accomodations places around it in the jungle (cabins, dorms, hammocks, etc.). We each paid about $5 for our cabaña for the night, brought our stuff to our very rustic room, then went to get some dinner at the restaurant with two other travelers, Alex, a German woman (taking a 5 week vacation here in Mexico) and Julian, a French guy (on the last leg of his 2 month world tour). We had a lot of fun recounting travel stories and talking about experiences here in Mexico. After 10pm, a band started playing, sort Cuban, sort of reggae, real hippy.

The next morning we got up early so we could be at the ruins as soon as possible. I took a bunch of pictures at Palenque (the ruins)... I'll try to remember the names of all the temples and buildings as I post the pictures. It was amazing to be in that place. The great majority of the ruins have still not been uncovered, and our guide told us that if they didn't take care of the site, within one year they would be overgrown with jungle because of the large amount of rainfall in the region.

Glad we got there early, because the groups of tourists were pouring in by the busload! We checked out the museum which explains recent findings and has original artifacts from the site, and we headed out of Palenque-town around 2pm. I decided that I needed another night in San Cristóbal de las Casas, and Ester was headed back too so that she could get on a mini-bus to Guatemala for a hiking trip the next morning.

After another crazy 5 or 6 hour bus ride through the mountains, we made it back to San Cristóbal. We were greeted at our hostel by our two Slovenian friends and some glasses of beer. They told us all about their salsa dancing lesson out in the garden, and about how earlier that evening Omar gave them a Mexican cooking lesson-- and then they got to eat all the food he had made.

The next morning I headed to the market, haggled some prices down, and decided to go up the Cerro de San Cristóbal, one of two large hills in the city with a church at the top. I walked halfway up and rested my sore legs (for having climbed all over Palenque the day before), and made a new friend who ended up showing me around all of the town, south of the zócalo, a language school (teaches french, english, italian, spanish and indigenous languages), and even north of the main square where his university is located. I'm sure we walked for at least 5 miles. San Cristóbal from the top of the cerro was beautiful, and I realized there's a lot more to the city than even I had thought before. On the other side of the Cerro there was a whole other half of the town!!

Although I didn't want to leave San Cristóbal de las Casas, it would have to be done sometime as my flight out of Cancún would be waiting 3 days later. I got on a bus to Mérida, located in the state of Yucatán. Another overnight bus ride. 13 hours, about half of them spent next to a man who had apparently bathed in cologne.

I woke up in Yucatán to a warmer climate, arrived at my hostel which was significantly uglier than my previous hostel in my favorite town. A shower was in order, and then a walking tour of the downtown area. Still, I was missing San Cristóbal. I found an artesanía shop, and having read about Yucatán being THE place to buy a hammock, I decided to check it out. I started chatting with the guy that worked in the shop, looked at some hammocks, but I needed to think about this purchase before I committed. I walked around town some more, checked out the church, did some much needed laundry, and around 5pm went back to the shop. They had a green hammock, I tried it out, and I made a new friend. Later that night, Alfonso and I went out for a beer and a chat. I felt strangely as though we must have met in a past life. He gave me a walking tour of the town and we talked about Maya legend/history. I surprised myself!! I hadn't know that I knew so much about all things Maya, he suggested I was maya in a past life? He was really surprised this girl knew things like that. Bedtime finally came, as my bus to Cancún would leave at 8am.

The last 2 days of mine were spent in Cancún. I never made it to Tulúm or Playa del Carmen, but by this point, all I wanted to do was rest and have some time to myself. I spent 2 days resting up, sleeping, thinking about the amazing journey I had just completed, and reminded myself I should maybe study a little for my exam back here in Monterrey the following day.

The exam was the most tranquilo, relaxed exam of my life. Went in, sat down, wrote my essay, and done. Last exam of undergrad, last exam in México... I walked away from the classroom feeling good, very calm. I walked away from my last exam slowly, letting it all sink in, soaking it up, enjoying the moment.

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