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Published: August 17th 2006
El Panchan is a hippy jungle commune type place on the outskirts of Palenque town in the jungle near the Mayan ruins. It had a very chilled out vibe and we secured ourselves a nice little cabaña to hang out in complete with noisy geckos! After getting settled at Magarita and Ed's cabanas we tripped back into town to try and post home our textile and vase purchases which we had been lugging around for quite a few days. It is surprising difficult to get packaging materials anywhere, we ended up scrounging a used box from a shop, then amused the local shoe shine boys trying to resize to fit our goods with our handy gaffa tape!
The first night there we went to one of only two places to eat in the little village famed for it's handmade stone-baked pizzas.... which were off the menu that night! Instead we had the hand-made pasta that was equally yummy I am sure. We were also treated to a local mexican folkband playing for us after our meal. Having not really drunk much alcohol on our trip, we also splashed out on a bottle of red to send us to sleep 
Arriving in the jungle
Note the very beautiful drum!!admist the jungle sounds.
The next day we went to visit the Mayan ruins. As they were pretty close we decided to walk there to save a bit of money. To begin with the road was nice and flat shaded by trees so all was well and good, but the second half hour was uphill in the full blown midday sun with the cheap little minibuses steaming up the hill past us puffing and huffing away! Should have got the bus obviously and walked back, doh! Should have thought really considering they ruled an empire from Palenque that it might be in quite a defencable spot, the view must have been amazing when the temples were at full height!
The Mayan ruins at Palenque were equally as impressive as the huge temples we had visited earlier in our trip but the experience was much more relaxing as there was not the killer heat element! The shady jungle made it is very pleasant to wander round. One major aspect that made these ruins so impressive as the way that the inner chambers of the temples had been so well preserved: under some of the larger temples there were a
Palenque ruins
This was the sight as you walked into the ruins. pretty impressive start! complex layout of tunnels and high arched chambers. The route we wandered round the site took us past a series of small waterfalls downhill to the road we had walked up. After a day of much walking we were very grateful when a bus pulled up just as we stepped out on to the road!
From Palenque we made our cross border trip down into Belize, which was all very straight forward with no need for bribary!!
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