San Cristobal (Con't) One day we participated in a hike that Anthony, a hostel volunteer, wanted to go on. We took the colectivo to Zinacantán for MXN16 where we stopped for Micheladas (MXN40 for 1L of essentially a Mexican caesar). As we walked out of town we were stopped by the tourism office and told we should have paid a fee of MXN15 to enter the town, but since the colectivo hadn't stopped we had no clue. We kept walking once he was distracted by a tour bus that showed up. We walked over the pass to Chamula, where we found out how half a litre (we shared one michelada) of beer affects Dan during a hot hike. It may have been primarily the heat, but the beer probably didn't help. Ashley was a trooper and ... read more

After much deliberation we decided to head to popular Agua Azul as a day trip on our own from Palenque. We caught the colectivo on 5a. Poniente Sur (Prof. Ydalio Huerta) for MXN35 (the better colectivo was MXN40). It took about an hour to get to the stop for the falls, then hopped a taxi for MXN20 down the road to the falls. During the taxi ride there were two toll booths where it cost MXN15 and MXN40 respectively to continue. These were manned by the local/indigenous population who the government had historically tried to kick off the land. It seems like they would have had ties to the Zapatistas, a militaristic group set to defend the indigenous populations rights and way of life. The falls themselves were beautiful with 4 different places to go swimming. ... read more

Hit up the Museo del Mundo Maya. We thought it'd be a good thing to do to get a little background on the ruins we'd been visiting since we hadn't been taking any guided tours. We hopped the city bus on Calle 56 between 57 and 59 for MXN7 and got off at the Gran Plaza, a big mall close to the museum. We still had to walk about 15 minutes along the major road to reach the museum. It cost MXN150 to get into the museum. Much of the information was in English, but all the movies were in Spanish so they just turned into nice places to sit for a few minutes. It started out as a history of the areas geology, flora, and fauna; it didn't really seem to tie into the Mayan ... read more

We took our time waking up today, but we were still up by 0700hrs. We headed to Ek'Balam via a taxi colectivo from Calle 44, between Calle 35 and 37. We were summoned from across the intersection by the driver. The price to Ek'Balam was fixed at MXN160, but we opted to wait for two more passengers (the max they can take being 4) to spread out the cost. It took about 1/2 hr before two locals showed up for the trip. They weren't going to the archeological site, but somewhere beyond. We'd recommend to set up going with other travellers ahead of time to avoid the wait at either end, especially the ruins side since it's more difficult to tell who came with a tour and who might need to share a colectivo back to ... read more

We headed out to Valladolid next so that a day trip to Chichen Itza would be less of an ordeal and we could get there earlier; before all the crowds and day trippers from the Cancun area showed up. Once again we took the ADO bus service. The ride was shorter again than what we thought, which is good as long as you're paying attention. As our bus wound its way through tiny streets we at first didn't realize we had reached our destination. A quick hop to Hostel del Fraile from the bus stop and we were checked into our MXN130 per night dorm room. We were quickly given a map by Victor, highlighting the supermarket, food Bazaar, city cenote, and other important sites. He let us know that he was running a bike tour ... read more