Thursday 4 July - Saturday 6 July

Palenque, Chiapas - Yaxchilan & Bonampak Ruins, Palenque Ruins, Misol-Ha & Agua Azul Cascadas

After an event free overnight bus ride from Playa del Carmen, we arrived bright n early in Palenque on the 4th of July to be immediately accosted by Ivan (Eevan), a local tour operator offering 'the best and cheapest' tours to the sights around Palenque. Eevan did eventually bag our business mainly thanks to his well crafted mini tour plan including trips to Palenque Ruins, the two Cascadas (Misol-Ha and Agua Azul) and a bus ride all the way to San Cristobal de las Casas, all for only 300 pesos each (a bus ticket alone from Palenque to San Cristobal is around 350 pesos each).
After checking into our quaint little hotel, Hotel Xibalba, freshening up and filling up on our best Mexican breakfast so far at Cafe Yara (100% organic Chiapan coffee, Huevos motuleños, Ensalade Verde, with fresh naranje and papaya juices) we spent the rest of the day walking the town........which didn't take too much out of us, it's a fairly small place, not too much going on here. The leafy hotel area called La Canadawas the drawcard of Palenque town.......cute little cafes, hotels and hostels built in amongst the trees with cobbled stone streets.

In the morning it was an early start, 5:45am pick-up, for a full day trip to Yaxchilan and Bonampak Ruins right on the border of Guatemala. The bits of interest for us were the boat ride up the Usumacinta River to get to Yaxchilan Ruins and the best preserved Mayan murals in the area (and probably the world) at Bonampak, as well as the chance of wildlife sightings throughout the trip.
After a bouncy 3 hours in the minibus we finally reached the river border between Mexico and Guatemala happy to be changing transport. We hopped into the long wooden canoe, cranked on the Mercury 110 and were at Yaxchilan in 25 minutes or so........nowhere near an hours ride, as advertised. The Usumacinta river is beautiful though, flowing wide and full from recent rains, flanked on both side by lush green rainforest.......kind of how I'd imagine the Amazon. We were greeted at the steps to Yaxchilan by some blood curdling screams from the boat in front of us as they were alighting. For one lady it was like she'd seen Medusa, she was shaking in tears and wouldn't get off the boat......we waited patiently. No doubt a jungle critter welcoming. It was a small Tarantula that had been on the steps to dry land. Our first one......tick it off.
Yaxchilan is amazing, I wont bore you with the history lesson, but it's an impressive set of ruins. Most of our 2 hours here were soundtracked by the local Howler Monkeys doing what they do best. Amazingly awesome sound!! We did manage to see them eventually but no great photo opps. Another impressive fact was the size of the Mosquito's here.........like flying ticks.
Back on the boat, some more Howler Monkey sightings, then back on land for lunch and off to Bonampak.
Before the tour we were told to get to Bonampak we'd have to change transport again, this time into the local 'EcoVans' (to protect the environment) to take us the 6km private road to the entrance. By 'Eco' they mean V8 American size mini buses driven at breakneck speed by the local Mayans. Fair enough, but amusing. Bonampak is a small ruins site, beautifully kept and preserved, with the main attraction in three small rooms at the top of a small temple - brightly coloured Mayan murals painted on the walls and ceilings inside these rooms, thousands of years old. A good day.

The next morning it was pack up and pick up at 8:00 am for our first stop, Palenque Ruins. Again, beautifully kept site with only about 10% of the ruins uncovered to date. 90% of it is yet to be painstakingly uncovered and reclaimed from the jungle surrounding this site. A once powerful Mayan city ruled by K'inich Janaab Pakal (Pakal the Great) that became so populated that it eventually led to the downfall of the city....some 4 people per square metre. Hard to imagine these Mayan temples in their heyday.....brightly coloured in reds, yellows and blues and teeming with activity. A highlight for us here was spotting a large Iguana shedding its skin and the trail to the exit which winds through the most beautiful fall of water I have seen for some time.......not big, but perfect in every drop. A nice end to the morning's walk.

I think by this stage its safe to admit that we're a bit ruined down, and in need of other sightseeing pursuits. We'll wait to see more ruins when we hit Peru in September methinks. So off we went to the much hyped Misol-Ha waterfall not too far down the road. Not the most amazing waterfall but cool that you could walk behind this one. We got drenched checking this out, but so worth it. 20 mins later we were out of there. Next stop Agua Azul (Blue Water). About an hour of winding road to get here. But unfortunately for us, there was too much recent rains so it was more like Agua Marrón (Brown Water). Still a beautiful set of tiered falls, not high but wide. Interestingly, swallows actually fly through the water to their nests behind the falls.

After 2 hours or so here, we got back into the mini bus and headed out of the valley up to the 'main' road to connect with our bus to San Cristobal de las Casas. Our driver's lack of English was somewhat frustrating, our Spanglish has been getting us by so far but this guy was infuriating. The more we didn't understand his instructions about our connecting bus, the more he talked. He had no tickets to give us for this bus, so we were a little concerned as to how this all was going to go down. He eventually stopped on the side of the road in some random place, offloading us and our bags, saying your bus will be here in 10 minutes. Donna wasn't having any of it. After pleading with a fellow tourist in our bus to help translate, the driver advised us our bus will be here shortly, gave us the name of the busline but eventually agreed to wait until our bus arrived, which duly happened. By this time there were other tourists being 'randomly' dropped off just in time to catch the same bus. Our driver did the necessary and we were happily on our way to San Cristobal. A strange setup, but T.I.M. (this is Mehico).