Palenque, Mexico

The five hour ride by bus to Palenque was intriguing mostly because of the swift changes in the geography and vegetation. Out of San Cristobal, we immediately began a climb over what was to be 2 major mountain passes and a switch from dry to lush vegetation. Poinsettias gave way to elephant ears and bromeliads, pines to deciduous, and all covered with huge vines, their long stems extending down by the hundreds to the ground. Finally we dropped down to the other side of the mountains to lowland jungle and a change in smell. It became both musty and sweet as we found ourselves surrounded by heat and humidity in the rainiest place in Mexico. Luckily, we had bright sun.
We went first to our hotel and turned on the air conditioning. Then we took a swim in the pool to cool off a little more. As we sat there, cooling off, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a little flicker in the grass. I looked again and discovered fireflies! I hadnt seen fireflies in years, and it was fun to see them more clearly as the sky darkened. They were everywhere right above the grass. We sat and watched them sparkle for half an hour and then our stomachs reminded us we had not eaten much since breakfast. After dinner we got to bed early so we could be ready for a full day at Palenque.
We got up to bird sounds again. This is one of the nicest aspects of being in the jungle or anywhere, for that matter, where birds are plentiful. By 8 am we were at the road looking for a colectiva (a public minibus that will pick you up if you stand alongside the road) to pass by. We were in luck! We climbed aboard with people who worked at the ruins and got there just as things were opening up.
After buying our ticket, 51 pesos (about $4.50) we walked to the first site. It was probably the most famous in the whole ruins Los Cruses de las Inscripciones. The structure itself approximately 90 feet tall with very wide steps the entire way up, and connected to 2 other buildings, the tomb of the red queen, Pakal´s mother´s burial site, and still another tomb site of one of his sons. All three together made quite an impression of strength and power for this Mayan ruler. Another building finished the quadrangle of structures. Amazingly enough, except for Las Inscripciones, all other structures were open to being climbed. So, we climbed them all. We scampered to the top of the one called The Acropolis del Sur and just stopped to rest, listen to the jungle, and smell the fragrances around us. Shortly, we were joined by hoards of tourists, all of them French! From that point, we walked downhill to the rest of the structures, both excavated and unexcavated, and took various side trails to see some falls called the Queen´s Bath. We were pretty tired by the time we finished, but we still wanted to see the museum.
The beautifully executed museum was one of the best if not the best we had seen. Even though the buildings still had many highly distinguishable bas-reliefs, the best of them, along with many statues or stelae, had been removed to the museum. And most of them retained their very ancient paint of reds and blues. What vivid colors were still visible! The most spectacular item, however, was the sarcophagus of the ruler Pakal. It was stunning! Huge and highly carved with the story of his life in symbols. Pretty impressive.
By now we were about ready to drop and happily found a colectivo to take us back to our hotel where we sat around the pool, had dinner, and waited until 8:30 pm for our overnight bus to take us to Tulum. We weren´t looking forward to that, for sure. If we had had the choice, we certainly would not have chosen it. But, there were no other buses going east, and we had to get there to fly out of Mexico in 5 days. So, we climbed aboard, looking forward to disembarking some 11 hours later.