Advertisement
Published: August 7th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Another church....
at least its a different colour... Well, we eventually had to force ourselves to pack up our stuff and move on from Peurto Escondido. The owners of the Aqualuna hotel took the Canadian and kiwi couples and us out for dinner to this fantastic restaurant which overlooked the beaches in Puerto Escondido. This was our goodbye dinner and we all ordered a delicious feast of barbecue ribs. mmmmm. we then had to say goodbye to Matt and Layna and board the bus for a fourteen hour trip to San Cristobal. The bus was fine but I don't know how they expect you to sleep when they pick up every straggler needing a lift along the roadside in the middle of the night, stop at every town and bus station making their announcements and then the most dreaded....the army checkpoints! Once again, awoken by an Mexican army man on the bus with his huge rifle to find that im the only one sitting there. Had to get off the bus and we were all lined up against this wall with our backpacks laid out on a line of tables in front of us. There are photographs of everyone who had been caught with something illegal in their bags
Palenque
Mayan ruins in Palenque and the sentences that they had done. Pretty scary in the middle of the night when you are half asleep. They just point at you with their torches and they shout "you!", and you have to step out and be searched and then you have to point out your bag and they go through everything in front of everyone. David had to go through his bag twice and mines was searched once. Even tho you know there's nothing in your bag, you are just standing there completely bricking it.
Eventually arrived in San Cristobal which was a delightful colonial town in the mountains. It was absolutely freezing and I cant understand how it can be so cold when Mexico city was roasting and it is higher up. We booked into this lovely room which was surrounded by a courtyard and set out to explore the town. It was beautiful, very clean which was a surprise compared to everywhere else in Mexico and the shops were fantastic, full of all sorts of wonderful, very original souvenirs and indigenous clothing that the people in San Cristobal wear. We jumped into a collectivo and made our way out to San Juan Chamula
Palenque
More ruins where this weird church was. The church floor was covered in pine needles and the walls on all sides were lined with small statues of saints inside glass amongst hundreds of vases of flowers. They had thousands of candles stuck everywhere, all over the floor and we nearly caught ourselves on fire a few times. The worshipers were all sitting in little groups on the floor all round the place, lighting candles and chanting to John the Baptist. They then killed these chickens and goats and spread the blood all over the floor and wiped it in their hair and then drank a small bit each. Was hideous and this was all washed down with a bottle of coca cola. Pretty freaky! Apparently they are praying to get rid of evil spirits and for these powers to heal people. Apparently these indigenous Mexican people have the power to heal people. That evening we went to an amazing Mexican restaurant and then had to hit our beds as we were so nackered from all the traveling.
The next day was spent wandering round markets admiring the thousands of Zapatista dolls, (dolls wearing balaclavas and holding machetes representing the left wing
Palenque
More ruins... peasant group of the EZLN political party fighting for indigenous peoples rights.) They now hide out in the jungle and every so often kidnap tourists and take over buildings trying to force the government to give them what they want. They hold a lot of support in the Chiapis areas and it is these guys that we have to be careful to avoid whilst traveling through these areas on buses. We then spent the rest of the day lazing about, drinking lots of rum and tequila until sunset and ending up pretty drunk.
We then jumped on a five hour bus to palenque, a town which is on the outskirts of the jungle and booked ourselves into a jungle lodge. We knew we wouldn't be able to stay long, the heat and humidity was unbearable ans as soon as we had a shower, we just wanted another one. The bugs were fierce but the food was excellent. The next day, we made our way to the Palenque ruins.... the most beautiful ruins in all of Mexico. They were amazing set within the backdrop of the jungle. Some had been excavated so as we could go inside the temples and tooms which was cool. We were so hot and desperate for a swim, this woman sent us on a wild goose chase to find this waterfall that apparently we could swim in. Ended up practically climbing up Mount Everest in the sweltering heat, (thought I was going to pass out) only to come down again very quickly due to an emergency requirement for the toilet which was caused by some bad coffee we had drank earlier. So, no waterfalls and the same woman had told us that if we ate in a particular restaurant that we could use their pool. So we rocked up, begging them to let us use their pool and they just laughed at us and must have been thinking daft tourists. Only guests can use their pool so we had to very embarrassingly walk off with our sweltering tails between our legs. Ha! What eegits!
After being there one day, we could take no more of the heat and jumped on a seven hour bus to Cheutemal only to grab a further four hour bus across the border into Belize. Arrived in Belize very tired and got a water taxi out to Caye Caulker.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.135s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0988s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Suzanne and George
non-member comment
Looks amazing
Hi David and Jenn,enjoying so much your hoiday blogg,sorry about the heat.......we could send you plenty of water today,pouring down here take care xx