Mexico part tres - Palenque

In between my few days in San Cristobal, I made a two day hop to Palenque ruins and Agua Azul. Palenque is an ancient Mayan city that dates back to 100 BC. It is 15 square km with over 500 excavated building of the 1400 or so that have been discovered. Because it's deep in the jungle, it wasn't discovered until the 1700 by the Spaniards. It's not nearly as large as Tikal, and I didn't feel like there were over 500 buildings to look at. But, you can climb to the top of most towers (apparently unlike many other sites) and many of the buildings are much better preserved and renovated.

I set off early Wednesday morning for the 5 hour bus ride from San Cristobal to Palenque. My bus was at 7:30, so I left the hostel about an hour before since I didn't really know where the bus station was. After following the directions on my map, I looked up and there was an actual bus station. I couldn't believe my eyes. Everyone had told me that the buses in Mexico were really nice, but I wasn't expecting this. In Guatemala, a bus station is a corner where old school buses pass, or are there waiting screaming locations as you, and hopefully if you are lucky you pick one up that isn't crammed with 100 people and has a place to sit. Bus stations in Mexico are actual stations. You have a ticket, a seat number, a schedule of departure times and even a waiting room with a place to buy snacks. Pretty impressive. The bus ride was easy and long. I've realized that I get a lot more car sick then I ever thought I did, so I've been dreading travel lately. But this one was ok. We even had movies and programs to watch. When I expressed my awe to the woman sitting next to me she said "this isn't even a nice one."

Once I got to Palenque, I headed out on the search for a place to stay. The town around the ruins isn't much to speak of. So, I headed towards the ruins where there are places to stay inside the national park that surrounds the ruins. My goal was to find a place close the park, where I could sleep on a hammock for the night. Thankfully, without too much trouble, I was successful! I stayed at a very nice place called Mayabell that had a mixture of everything from cabanas with air conditioning to camping and covered areas where you could hang a hammock.

The ruins were impressive and it's always fascinating to try and imagine people living in this great city over 2000 years ago. There were great views from the top of temples that made the steep climbs worth it. Given that it was Semana Santa though, everything was packed. There were tourists everywhere, which took away a little bit from the experience.

After about two hours of wandering around, I headed back to the hostel to enjoy being in the outdoors. And let me tell you, I had the most amazing nights sleep in my hammock. Luckily, I had brought my sleeping bag. Others who didn't ended up having a few cold hours in the middle of the night.

The next day I headed with a tour to 2 waterfalls that are on the way back to San Cristobal. Unfortunately, everything was again packed with people, but the waters were still beautiful. Misol-ha is the smaller one of these two with one main pool and 35 meter waterfall. The water was chilly and refreshing.

Agua Azul, is a very popular destination. It has over 2km of waterfalls and small pools. It was amazing to see how large it was. Each time you got to a spot, you thought there couldn't be anymore pools, but there were. I was in heaven and tried to swim in as many spots as I could.


Afterwards, I made the long journey back to San Cristobal, watched more movies on the amazing buses and headed back to my hostel. I'm now back in Xela, feeling a little out of place after the two weeks of travel. But, I'm ready to start volunteering again and tomorrow will be heading to some women's groups with PIES, my new place of work!