Night bus To Palenque

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Got into Palenque this morning at 0630hrs after the over night bus. We only got woken up once by some military personnel checking passports; they didn't want us so we got through fine. We had the breakfast we bought for the bus ride and headed to our hostel, just a short walk. We spent a little time there locking up our things and researching. We decided to take the colectivo to the ruins right around 8. It wasn't hard to find the colectivos to the 'ruinas' on 3a Poniente Norte (Allende) just north of Central Poniente (Benito Juárez). For MXN20 they would get us the 7 kms to the ruins.

It cost MXN30.50 to enter the national park, and an additional MXN64 to get into the ruinas themselves. There were yet again guides, but as always we were too cheap relying on any English plaques we could find. This site was by far the highest concentration of restored ruins in a small space. We found it very enjoyable to not have to cross great distances to see all the great temples and walk inside the palace. We walked the site on our own for about 3 hours before following a path to the Cascadas de la Reine and the museum well below the ruins. The path spit us out along the road up to the ruins, with plenty of colectivos to catch back to town and the museum only a couple hundred meters down the hill. Alas, the museum was closed (being a Monday) so it was too bad we missed that. It was only about noon, and we couldn't check in until 2 so we decided to walk back to town.

It was quite the walk, but at least mostly downhill. That didn't help with the heat. It took a good hour and a half to reach town, having to cross the road many times trying to find the overgrown path. Famished we stopped at the first place we could get to safely for a quick bite to eat, checked into the hostel and went shopping for dinner. Having been a long day we crashed hard early.

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