The Mayans

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Hello!
Wow this has been a hectic week! after our first days of trying to fit in the whole of mexico city, we then stayed one day and one night in the pretty mountain town of San Cristobal de las casas. the town has lots of recent history as it was a Zapatista controlled area for a while. the dispute between them and the government still isnt completely sorted but there´s no signs of anything remotely like that in the town. all the buildings are brightly painted, and the mexicans there continued to be very friendly, helpful, and generally jus good banter! we also has by far and away our best meal whilst we were there! after over a week of the most horrific sights that are termed "food", it was nice to have something both truely edible and very tasty! it was most welcome! anyway, after San Cristobal, we caught the first bus to Palenque which is slightly northeast of SC. The journey was pretty bad as it was all through the mountains and the roads very windy so we both felt really quite sick! we saw some crazy things along the way though - the mexicans are destroying and burning massive areas of the jungle there, leaving the air thick with smoke so that visability isnt great at times. the deforestation has also left massive scars on the landscape that are actually quite upsetting to see, especially due to the worryingly large number of new fires we passed along the way. we stayed deep in the jungle in Palenque, right in the thick of things, in a small Cabaña with a palm-thatched roofed. the noises and trees there were incredible, as the number and amount of vegetation and animals was so much fun to be in! the next day, we went on a day trip of the stunning ruins at Palenque, and then to 2 waterfalls after that called Misol-Ha, and Agua Azul. The latter being by far the superior of the watefalls - we swam in our own little pools of clear blue water in the middle of the jungle, before moving upstream to the rapids! great fun! the ruins at Palenque, where i have actually been before, we just amazing! again, set deep into the jungle, these awe-inspiring pieces of architecture and cultural history have been a real highlight so far. very different to te first ruins we saw at Teotihuacan, these were the first Mayan ruins of many we plan to see. We are becoming more and more fascinated by this brilliant people who lived in central america for over 2000 years! if you are interested, google Mayans or something and have a quick read!
After Palenque, it was another 6am bus to Flores in Guatamala which is where we are now. we arrived yesterday afternoon and watched our first sunset over the beautiful lake we´re staying on. it was brilliant fun! Claire lay in a hammock, and we sipped on a number of the local beers! She then decided to take an impromptu dip in the lake!!! after the sunset, we met up with a few people we had met on the bus who were also staying at our hostel. we ended up having a few drinks until about 11pm on our roof terrace, with almost everyone from the hostel coming up to say hello. Twas a really fun first night out! But the timing couldn´t have been any worse as we were up at 3am this morning to watch the sun rise over the jungle canopy at Tikal - our second set of Mayan ruins! This was a truely magical experience as a group of about 30-40 of us sat atop a 70 metre tall, 1500 year old (and the rest!) pyramid in complete silence to watch the most spectacular sunrise, listening to the hundreds of animals waking up in the jungle! some of the sounds and sights were just amazing to behold, especially hearing the crazy yet tiny howler monkeys make they´re eary, demonic yakking across miles of jungle! we were also lucky enough to see a battle between a parrot and a falcon in mid-air just beneath where we were sitting! after that, we were taken around some of the huge park (over 120km squared!) in Tikal, and taught even more fascinating things about the Maya. We´ve had quite a day! and that brings us up to now! absolutely SHATTERED and off to bed at 5.30pm! we´ve got a bus to catch to Belize tomorrow at 7am, before we head to the beach to relax for a couple of days and hopefully do some scuba diving!
Anyway, much love for now! Missing everyone. Raffi and Claire

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