San Cristobal and Palenque

---

After taking it easy in Puerto Escondido for a few days we headed north to San Cristobal de las Casas which is a beautiful mexican mountain town surrounded by some incredible indigenous mayan villages.

From San Cristobal we hired a car with the intention of heading north to the Palenque ruins for a night, returning on the next day. As we attempted to find one of the villages, we got completely lost in the hills and subjected our poor little volkswagen derby to some terrain that it was never intended to cross. We´re talking some serious offroading - up and down steep, muddy, boulder ridden tracks across the mexican highlands to a town called Cancuc - 30km from the nearest paved road - and the site of jenny´s first experience of having the attention of an entire town - all at the same time. I don´t think they see blonde hair in those parts very often.

5 and a half hours later we were back on the road to palenque.

Palenque is an incredible ancient mayan city in northern Chiapas, deep in the jungle. It´s incredible to think that they built this place, with all of it´s beautiful reliefs and sculptures without pack animals, metal tools or the wheel.

It was very hot.

On the way back to San Cristobal we stopped at a few waterfalls, one of which was called Misol Ha, which was the waterfall Arnie jumped off of in Predator.

We love you Arnie.

---