Blogs from Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico, North America - page 9

We catch our bus at 8.10 am and snooze for the two hour journey to Vilamosa airport. When we arrive we cannot find our flight on the departure board we que up at a check in desk we hhad our tickets over to the check in attendant who sighs when she sees them. There is a problem. The airline with who we have ticket, one of the three tickets that we have stressed over, missed flights for, argued about, paid one pound a minute to discuss with BA and paid for re-issue only two days before has gone bust. Our flight no longer exists. There are no other flights to Marida that day from Vilamosa. The attendant disappears for about ten minutes and a large que forms behind us. She manages to get us on the ... read more

Wed 10th Dec '08 We had an early breakfast of gallo pinto (rice & beans) at the hotel at then we packed our stuff. We took a taxi to the ADO bus station & we bought the tickets for our 7 hr trip to Palenque. I found the roads & infrastructure in Mexico to be excellent. We saw a lot of peasant type houses but a lot of well built houses too. Every house seemed to have hamacas, tv & small Virgin Mary shrine lit with Christmas lights or candles. Everyday 5kms or so we saw individual & relay joggers carrying burning torches with support pick up trucks on the roads. It was an impressive demonstration of faith jogging for miles in 28 degree heat. They were running a pilgrimage for the 12th Dec Festival which ... read more

Puebla was a fantastic time but it was tme to head to some warmer weather. It took a couple days and a night in an interesting town called Minatitlan, but we made it to spectacular Palenque. This a an ancient Mayan city covering a lot of area. Complete with temples, palaces, ballcourts where the losing team lost a lot more than the game, and breath-taking scenery, we spent the better part of the day here. The temples seemed to rise straight out of the ground with mountains covered in dense jungle as backdrops, amazing. As with every site in Mexico, school children of all ages run rampant through out the entire area. Part of the city goes down into the jungle where you can see all kids of wildlife, including monkeys. Then we decided to do ... read more

Palenque We caught a bumpy ferry from Cozumel to Playa del Carman where Karen went a pretty shade of green, then directly onto a 13hr overnight bus journey, (where Marcel was convinced an old man smelled of wee and kept him awake all night) Karen slept like a baby! We stayed at Edd and Margarita's a hotel in the jungle on the border of the national park and could hardly sleep as the crickets were so loud but so beautoiful and then in the morning we were woken at 5am by what sounded like a dinosaur, as the howler monkeys said good morning with a huge roar that fills the jungle!!! We Went for a walk into the national park and were lucky enough to see a toucan (like the guiness adverts!) apparently really rare,(the ... read more

Mate-li stesti a neprsi-li nejaky cas pred vasi navstevou La Venty, mate velkou sanci, ze park napodobujici naleziste olmecke kultury nebude zaplaven. Pokud budete mit tak velke stesti, jako jsme meli mi, nebudou tam ani komari. Park se nachazi ve meste Villahermosa a je to castecne ZOO a castecne umele zbudovana archeologicka zona jedne z nejrannejsich mexickych kultur. Nejznamejsi jsi asi obri olmecke hlavy, ktere jsou ale bohuzel castecne v puvodnich mistech a castecne v nejruznejsich muzeich. V parku je pouze jedna z nich, ale krome ni jsou tu dalsi kamenne exponaty, povetsinou oblozene pytli s piskem, aby je pri zaplavach voda neposkodila. Cela oblast je totiz jedna velka nizina se spoustou rek a bazin a kdyz trochu vice zaprsi, coz se zde deje relativne casto, zaplavam se nevyhnete. Jedine, co drzi mistni oblast pri zivote ... read more