Traversing Mexico

Well, the last week has been busy. We spent three nights in Palenque and enjoyed the ruins there. They are absolutely beautiful and surrounded in jungle. There is an amazing river that runs through the site with waterfalls. The water is so clean that you can drink it.

The entrance to Palenque ruins

Gorgeous waterfall at Palenque :-)

The following day we decided to head out to Yaxchilan on the Guatemalan border. The only way to get out there is to book a tour. This involves a 2 ½ hr drive to the river where we caught a 40 min longa ride into the jungle to get to the site. We spent the day with a lovely group of people from Mexico, Italy and Germany where our Italian friend cheerfully translated for us.

An American archeologist also joined us for the ride out to the border on his way back to ‘work’, a largely unexcavated site in Guatemala. Do to the lack of transport out that way he needed to catch a tour across the border.

Yaxchilan was absolutely gorgeous. Not as well preserved or ornate as Palenque but there is something about being in the middle of ancient jungle that is incredibly serene and beautiful. There were lots of stairs and climbing to be done here.

Longa ride out to Yaxchilan

More stairs at Yaxchillan

Vanessa mirroring my thoughts, "OMG more stairs!". Hard to see just how far these go. So much nicer than the gym though :-)

After lunch at a local restaurant we headed out to Bonampak ruins, lots more stairs again.

The view atop Bonampak

The following day we’d planned to head back to Villahermosa, then get another bus to Comalcalco, then the overnight bus to Campeche. On arriving in Villahermosa we couldn’t find a bus to Campeche, apparently the route is not economical...argh Internet you fail us again! We make an impromptu change to head straight to Campeche.

Let me tell you one very big disadvantage of not speaking the language, is accidentally getting on the bus that stops at every village and every stop along the way. What is normally a 5 hour bus ride became about 8 hours. We had all sorts of folk getting on and off with their boxes of (smelly) fish, pork and live chickens. At least we got to experience the local culture somewhat ;-)

We spent the night at Campeche and caught a taxi out to Edzna ruins the next day. It was refreshing to have the entire site to ourselves and Vanessa and I were a bit naughty and climbed the pyramid which is normally off limits.

Edzna

We caught another bus to Merida, this time we managed to get a first class one…ahhh and watched a crappy movie dubbed in Spanish. The size of our backpacks seems to be a great conversation starter with American tourists who just can’t believe how big they are. On arriving in the hotel in Merida we met two lovely Americans who gave us the super fast tour of the city and showed us a great place to eat (with lots of vegetarian options, yay!).

The following day we took the craziest bus tour to 5 sites around Merida. On the tour we had people from Canada, Poland, Germany, UK, Taiwan, none of whom spoke Spanish. The bus driver (who only spoke Spanish) had the schedule worked out down to the minute. We literally had 20 mins at each site, although one was 26 mins, just enough time to walk in and take a photo to say we’d been there. We did get to see the cacao museum though, yay, and enjoyed a hot chocolate there (very quickly). 

Cacao Museum

Chemtrails at Labna - not cool :-(

The highlight of the trip was Uxmal where we had the luxury of 1 ½ hrs at the site..still nowhere near long enough. Here I absolutely loved the magician’s pyramid. Unfortunately we couldn’t climb it but it was awesome nonetheless.

Magician's pyramid, Uxmal

Atop another pyramid at Uxmal, this is still only a very small part of the site.

Today we headed to Chichen Itza. We lucked out and once again, got on one of the buses that stops everywhere. The ruins themselves were a bit disappointing. They are probably the most well preserved/restored that we’ve seen, however the place is covered in hawkers and it attracts a fair bit of the ‘Cancun’ crowd. Being close to Spring Equinox we were hoping to see ‘the snake’ make it’s way down the pyramid, but no such luck.

El Castillo at Chichen Itza

So anyway we are almost ‘ruined out’ and heading to Tulum tomorrow to check out the Caribbean coast. I am sitting by the pool in a hammock at our hotel, surrounded by fruiting orange trees, hoping one of the staff members will 'telepathically' understand that I feel like a cold beer ;-)