Last hurrah in Mexico
As promised, the city of San Cristobal has lived up to its reputation as a charming, friendly colonial town that (most importantly!) has a mild climate. When we arrived by bus, we found a hotel and then immediately proceded to put on jackets and pants. Our hotel was thankfully willing to let us leave our bikes and most of our bags here while we took the bus to the town of Palenque. This section of bussing had been in our plan all along, as the road to Palenque from San Cristobal is about 220 km of tortuously winding road, in the exact opposite direction that we want to travel. After arriving in Palenque (both of us somewhat carsick), we set about booking our tours for the next two days. Since the town of Palenque is somewhat boring in and of itself, we decided to stay outside of town in this little community called El Panchan. It consists of several different encampments with cabins or dorm-style rooms to sling a hammock (big among the backpacker crowd), all surrounded by jungle. There was much less human noise here than there was in town, but we traded it for the noises of the birds and insects, who were surprisingly loud during the night. And I should mention that we were now back in the heat and humidity, so it was back to sleeping with a fan pointed at us all night. However, the rainy season hasn’t really gotten into full bloom yet, so it has been pretty bug-free so far.
At 6 AM the next morning, we were out by the side of the road waiting for a van to come pick us up. Our first tour was to the Mayan ruins of Yaxchilan and Bonampak. We first went to Yaxchilan, and since there are no roads to the ruins, we had to take a hour-long boat ride down the Usumacinta river (which is along the Mexico/Guatemala border) to see them. All of these Mayan cities were abandoned before 1000 AD, so rather than having been ravaged by the conquistadores, these ruins have been mostly ravaged by the passage of time, and encroachment of the jungle. In fact, the most recent inhabitants of these ruins appeared to be of the flying type (bats and birds). Anyway, back to Yaxchilan…the site itself is mostly known for its well-preserved carvings. Most of the carvings were done in limestone, which makes their preservation all the more impressive. We only had two hours here, which was a little rushed—we got to see everything, but we had to move quickly. The next site, Bonampak, is famous for its well-preserved wall paintings. Overall, the site is smaller than Yaxchilan, with its main attraction being three small rooms with paintings of various events in the history of the city.
The next day we did a one-way tour to the Palenque ruins, a couple of waterfalls, and then back to San Cristobal. The ruins at Palenque were simply amazing. The site itself has buildings of greater size and number than any of the other sites we’ve seen so far. We saw a map in the museum of the entire city of Palenque when an estimated 100,000 people lived there, and the amount of the city that has actually been excavated that you can visit is only a very small fraction of what it was at its height. After Palenque, we visited the waterfall of Misol-Ha. You can actually walk behind the waterfall and climb up into a cave carved out by additional waters that also feed the lagoon below the falls. Then we saw the biggest waterfall attraction of the area, Agua Azul. The water here is a very bright blue, and although the largest and most spectacular part of the falls is at the bottom, you can hike along a path for about a kilometer and see smaller waterfalls the entire way. This is a popular place for people to swim, and having been sweating the entire day, we definitely took advantage, finding a smaller pool up along the path where the water was calmer and the people were fewer. Then it was back along the windy road to San Cristobal, where thankfully, our bikes and bags were still waiting for us.
We’ve had a couple more days in San Cristobal to relax before we head out tomorrow toward the Guatemalan border. We should be in Xela (Quetzaltenango) by next Sunday to start our language classes. We have enjoyed our time in Mexico immensely and will be sad to leave, but we are also both really looking forward to improving our Spanish, and seeing what Guatemala has to offer.
Leave a Reply