Mayan temples at Palenque

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We fly to Villamosa and take a taxi from the airport to town and then a bus to Palenque which is a little over two hours away it seems further as they put a a musical movie called Hairspray on which is just awful.The hotel at Planeque is made up of individual cabins, leaf roofed with hammocks outside. The bathroom that is around a corner from the bed with no door which helps you get to know the person that you are sharing with a little better than perhaps you need to. We eat in the hotel resturant wherer the bar man introduces me to a Caccaratcha. Caccaratcha is made by warming a glass of Kaluha, ignighting it and pouring it from hight into a glass of tequila. Add some sparkling water, slam the glass so it all fizzes together then down in one. It produces quite an interesting sesation I was left buzzing for about twenty minutes.

We get up early and walk two kilometers to the enterance to the national park where the Palenque temple ruins are. A bus takes us a further two kilometers to the top of the hill. The temples were once painted brick red and turquoise with reliefs telling the nobles myths, legends and history. Painted flowers decorated the walls. The paint has now nearly all faded away and the reliefs are eroded by the weather but the temples are still magnificent. We climb the steep stepped side of one of the pryamids and look across the well kept lawns to the other temples and buildings that surround us and jungle behind. We walk to the exit passed waterfalls to the road and take a ten pesso bus back to the town center. It is driven by a maniac who speeds up to the traffic and breaks hard just before touching the bumper of the vehical ahead before swinging out and over taking on a blid corner. He balast Italian opera out of teh speakers as he drives. We go to a neighbouring hotel for our evening meal which is awful. There are only a couple of other tables that are occupid and they test the speaker system with cheesey dance music whilst we eat. We get an early night ready for an early start the next morning.

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