Onwards from Mérida: Palenque - San Christobal. And stops in between.

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Okay, another update for you guys (I keep hoping anyone´s reading this...)

Last time I blogged we were still in Mérida - we have moved a lot since then.

On the morning of the fourth we got on another ADO-bus for quite a long haul - to Palenque. On the way we met quite a nice dutch guy who seems to have almost the same itinerary as we do - only he´s doing it on his own. There are a lot of lone travellers here - I´m quite impressed with that, actually; I wouldn´t dare to tour around on my own, especially with only rudimentary spanish language-skills.

Anyways - after a full day on the bus we finally got to the nature reserve of Palenque, which is situated in the beautiful jungle of Chiapas. The wildlife there is stunning - there are tucans, holler-monkeys, hummingbirds, etc...

Visitors and Fire-dancing

As we were staying in the nature reserve we promptly got all kinds of visitors in our room, starting with a toad on our arrival, a cute little gecko later in the evening, a not so cute cockroach when we got back and wanted to sleep and, to top it all of, a scorpion in the morning, which had obviously slept in my towel and flew right at me, when I wanted to take it off the chair and into my backpack. Of course I screamed (and you guys know I never scream at insects, right?) - which still is a subject of many jokes among our group. Tiago told me later their bite isn´t deadly - you just get a fever for half a week. Big comfort, that, haha!
Luckily, it didn´t bite and just scuttled off on the wall - I took a picture of it, and yes, it was kind of fascinating, but only from a distance and NOT in my towel! 😉
But let´s go back to the night before for a second. We had another (non-planned) group-dinner; we all just gathered in the hotel-restaurant, because we were hungry and there wasn´t much else to do, really. The food was great as almost always here and we played some card-games to pass the time.

Later in the evening we took a walk to a nearby hotel which had a great form of entertainment scheduled - fire-dancing! The walk itself was quite a stunning experience - the night-sky was beautiful, the jungle-life produced a singularly background noise and ... well, I can´t really describe, it, sorry. Stunningly beautiful, though!
The fire-dancing was great as well - I uploaded a couple of pictures to give you an idea of the pace they were swinging their fire-sticks and -ropes with. There were a lot of backpackers there, too - including the dutch guy we had met on the bus. I´m willing to bet we´ll meet him again, since he has almost the same schedule as we do and things always seem to happen that way. 😉

Next morning we saw the Palenque-ruins, and man, were they great! Again, the pictures don´t really do them any justice at all, I´m going to upload them, anyway. You´ll have to wait for a lengthier description, though - I don´t have the time for that (nor San Christobal and the indigenous villages we visited) right now, sorry... almost time for group-dinner! 😉

Okay, here's the promised update

The Palenque ruins

Palenque isn't nearly as well known as Chitzen Itza is, mostly because it's not as close to the tourist centers Cancùn and Playa del Carmen. They are absolutely worth a visit, though - perhaps even more so, because they´re situated in the middle of the jungle and you can hear (and, if you´re lucky, see) a lot of the abundant wildlife. For example we saw some "yellow winged falcons" (the guide called them that, no idea what their real english name is, though, because he translated it from the Mayan language) and heard the holler monkeys as well as a couple of tucans. Sadly enough we didn´t see them, though - let´s hope we´ll be more lucky in Tikal!
The ruins themselves are absolutely stunning as well - Pakal's tomb, the Palace and a lot of other uncovered structures as well as a whole lot of buried structures in the jungle make it very special, perhaps even more so than Chitzen Itza. Our guide was very good (as was the one at C.I. by the way, GAP // Tiago seem to be good at chosing nice people), making a lot of jokes but being very informative as well.
They found a lot of nice carvings and relics there as well and are still in the process of uncovering more. Very exciting, all that. I'll just let the pictures speak, though - can't well describe the wonders of Palenque and the Mayan world.
On more thing though: the Mayan calendar us very fascinating - I got myself a nice peace of leather with it painted on, the artwork is quite stunning; I'll show it around once I get back, don't you worry. 😉
Anyways, my Mayan zodiac sign is Kankin (the tree of life) - you can google it, if you want, once again I don't really have the time to go into detail here.

Waterfalls and San Christobal

After our visit to Palenque we all hopped onto a private van and went on in the direction of San Christobal de las Casas. The road there from Palenque is
a) quite beautiful, since it's winding through the jungle and the mountains,
b) thus extremely windy, so it makes a lot of people sick - none of us, though,
and c) there are some great waterfalls (Agua Azul and another one, the name of which I can't quite remember - it's Mayan) on the way, where we stopped, admired the view and grabbed a bite to eat. Hanna even took a swim and quite enjoyed it, while the rest of us where happy to just watching her splashing around (with her glasses still on for some slapstick relief).

After another long afternoon on the road we finally arrived at San Christobal de las Casas, a beautiful little town (comparably) near the Guatemalian border, which we were to cross two days hence.
We grabbed some dinner (en group again) and more or less all fell into bed - doing nothing but sitting in a van all day sure makes you tired!
Next morning, our little group of adventurerers split up - Tiago had to go and fix his Visa for Mexico; Wayne, Mori, Bernhard and Pia opted for a nice and quiet day in the city, exploring it on their own and Hanna, Debbie, Helen and me went with a local guide to two indigineous village in the vicinity of San Christobal. We were joined by two others: Sonja from Germany and Roland from Austria - funny, how the only two languages you seem to hear in these parts (apart from Spanish and various Mayan languages of course) are German and Dutch.

Indigeneous villages

I'm ashamed to admit I forgot both names of the villages we visited, as well as all the Mayan words and expressions César, our guide, taught us. Other than that, they made a very lasting impression with me, though - the people there are very poor by western standards, but seem happy (and friendly) enough, as long as you let them live the way they want to. Their religion is a curious mixture between Catholicism and Mayan beliefs, which varies greatly among different villages. A couple of examples:
- Men in the first village we visited have only one wife while those in the second have several.
- In the second village people are allowed to offer life chickens to the Saints - they kill them in the church in a set ritual.
- The second church we visited had pine needles on the floor, the first one a tiled floor, but both had a great many candoles burning, in the Mayan colors red, green, yellow, black and white.

I hope that gives you an idea about how different from the Catholic church these people interpret Christianity, they're happy in their ways, though. Sadly, there are still some Christian groups (Jehova's witnesses and Mormons, amonst others), who try to bring the "holy word" in it's "pure form" to these people and euphemistically call it "helping" them. They should build schools, water purifiers and hospitals, if they really want to help!!
As I said - the people there are quite poor, mostly living on corn, fruits and vegetables they grow themselves - some have lifestock, especially chickens, as well. The women weave a lot, which is not so much for tourists as according to the Mayan traditions, which have been kept for thousands of years. The village elders even still wear the same type of sandals we could see depicted on the tomb of Pakal!
Our guide was very good, he told us more about these people's ways and beliefs than I could ever write down - suffice it to say we were very impressed, bought a lot of local, handmade things and hope for these people to be able to continue to live their own lifestyle.

Next day it was on to Guatemala - I´ll write about that next time, as well as add some photos of the indigenous villages.

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Photos

Fire dancing
beautiful in the night.

Scorpion!
Fascinating... from a distance!

Palenque Ruins
Impressive, no?

Palenque III
Great sights!

Palenque Group picture
on top of the palace, facing the famous tomb of Pakal.
Left to right: Wayne, Hanna, Bernhard, Pia, Helen, Tiago, me, Mori, Helen.