Palenque: Ruins and Waterfalls

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We slowly descended the mountains into the hot and humid lowlands, our 6 hour bus trip took in some magical scenery before arriving at our destination, the ruins of Palenque. This is one of the grand archaeological sites of Mexico, the ancient Mayan city is set amongst thick forest mountains and the jungle certainly adds to the mysterious feel of the ruins.

We based ourselves in the La Canada area, 5 miles from the ruins, at a pretty decent place called Hotel Chablis (550 MXN). The air conditioning was a life saver as the humidity was very draining! We easily flagged down a collectivo (local minibus) going to the ruins (10 pesos each) and spent most of a day exploring the temples, palace and museum. This magnificent city dates back to early 300 BC and much of its history has been recovered by the work of epigraphers detailing a fascinating past. If you are interested in more then click on the wiki link, Palenque, the ancient Maya site. The up side of not travelling with a tour group was being able to take our time and recover in the shade whenever necessary and believe me, in this heat we sat in the shade a lot ! We had moved onto Mexican medicine in the hope of finally kicking our stomach bug, we had fun in a non-English speaking chemist trying to explain our symptoms 😊

Whilst staying in Palenque, we spent a day at the waterfalls of Misol Ha and Agua Azul. We were lucky enough to get the front seats with a great view in a full collectivo, it is always interesting to catch a glimpse of village life. The locals utilise the numerous speed bumps as a way of selling their goods (food and drink, etc), taking advantage of the slowing vehicles. On more than one occasion, children attempted a road block with rope in order to stop our minibus, but our driver was having none of it ! We had lunch at Agua Azul and managed to escape the oppressing heat by taking a dip in the refreshingly cool waters, we steered clear of numerous waterfalls though 😊

The tablets seem to be working and we finally managed to enjoy a whole meal each at Maya Canada restaurant. We even had a margarita, our first alcoholic drink in over a week - now that’s an indicator of how ill we have been 😱

Next stop Chetumal and Bacalar.

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Comments

[Heather]

wonderful
Hi ,glad you are enjoying your travels still hope you are feeling better now,just love the waterfalls ,better than the one in wales we went too ,wish we were there but it would be tooo hot for me i would never make the climb now would i ( ha ha ) lots of love M & D xx

[deb]

hi
glad you too are feeling better now. photos look great, went to see mum and dad yesterday at st neots took nan out for day aswell all good down here, dad doing fishing every day mum chilling. take care xx