We arrived in the town of Palenque at five in the morning, very tired and fairly grumpy, because we’d barely slept on the freezing-cold bus.
Decision point: should we get coffee in town, or head to El Panchán, the hippy-tourism complex where we were going to be staying? We decided on the complex, hoping to get a room and take a nap. We caught a taxi out there and were dropped off at the first office of the place. This office was closed, so we walked down the driveway toward the other buildings.
The complex was in a jungle setting, with several different sets of cabañas, restaurants and other rooms to stay, joined with concrete paths between them. A stream ran through the area, and it was bridged a few times. Many of the places had hippy art decorations, like shells pressed into the concrete, or murals on the walls.
Nothing was open this early in the morning. Besides us, there were a few other confused tourists wandering around, including one guy with a cricket bat. Jess asked one woman, who was setting things up in a little restaurant that also advertised cabañas, about getting a room. She basically said, “¿Quién sabe?” (“Who knows?”), and explained that they were full and she didn’t know if anyone would leave today. She recommended that we try at another place, Rakshita’s.
We wandered the paths, trying to find the office. We sat at a table near another sign for cabañas. Soon a French traveler joined us and we talked with him in a mixture of Spanish and English. Xie and Jess wandered back to the office near the entrance and got our name on a “list” for a cabaña. The woman there had told them that nothing was available, but something might open up later. When they asked to get on the list, the woman took out a random piece of paper and put their name on it.
On the way back, they noticed that Don Mucho’s restaurant had opened up. We went for coffee and breakfast. We all got egg varieties with bread or tortillas. Huevos estrellados means eggs sunny side up, and huevos revueltos are scrambled eggs.
While eating, we watched the leader of a large group collecting keys from the folks to turn in. We got all excited at the opportunity of getting a room. Jess spied the name on one of the keys, and it was “Chato’s”, the same place we were on the “list” for. Jess and Xie went back up to get the room, while CM stayed to watch the luggage and enjoy another cup of coffee.
The room had not been cleaned yet, but they gave us the key, so that we could stash our luggage there. We were stoked to have a place and to be in a beautiful environment.
While we were putting our stuff down, we heard this crazy grunting/screaming sound coming from the forest that sounded like it was a tape being played over and over again. We thought that it might be a tape of a howler monkey. Later, after hearing howler monkeys at the sites, we realized that it had been real howler monkey calls. They do this really rhythmic calling that seems like it couldn’t be natural. There were also a bunch of birds flitting around, beautiful and interesting birds.
We were all tired, but we decided to head for Palenque anyway. Shortly after the driveway was the entrance to the park, where we had to pay $20 pesos each to get a wristband ticket. The archaeological site was one kilometer down the road.
Near the first entrance to the park is a museum; we went inside. It had a bunch of cool statues, stone carvings, glyphs and other paraphenalia pulled from the site, to be studied and protected.
We learned some things about the Mayans at Palenque. The incense burners, made of clay, were statues of several faces on top of each other (vaguely remeniscent of Pacific Northwest totem poles), where the smoke would come out of the ears, noses and mouths of the faces. The incense was made from the sap of the copal tree, mixed with human blood.
The Mayans have a sort of reincarnation theory, so that people came back as (or with?) trees, and that way they reach heaven.
The biggest exhibit was the tomb of Pakal, a major ruler at Palenque, who lived for 80 years. They showed a bunch of videos about the tomb, the ruins and about their discovery and what they had learned about them Pakal was buried with a lot of jewelry, including a jade mask that accurately portrayed his face. The mask had fallen to pieces over the years. The first archaeologists put it together, and later another group made a second mask that more accurately represented his face based on new information they had about Mayan art.
Pakal’s tomb was very elaborate, and the main staircase leading to it had been blocked off, so that he wouldn’t be disturbed during his transformation to a diety and his ascension to heaven. There was a smaller “spirit staircase” next to the big one, so that people would still have spiritual access to Pakal.
After checking out the museum, we headed over to the ruins. The Palenque site is vast, with many different clusters of buildings and pyramids. It was very crowded with people and vendors. There were all kinds of different buildings in different places, used for governmental, residential and religious reasons.
There are a bunch more photos of Palenque on Flickr.
All day we kept hearing howler monkeys, really loud and seemingly close.
Shortly before the park closed, we ran into a guard, and Jessica asked him about the monkeys. He said that we were hearing about four monkeys, and that they were about 500 meters away. This was rather surprising, given how loud they were. He said that we could wander around for another fifteen minutes and then we should head for the exit.
We exited the site and walked the long, hot kilometer back towards our cabaña. Along the road were cows and cattle egrits, poor residences and a few places with cabañas or room for tourists to camp out. We saw a mostly dead tree that was partially fallen over, and had a cactus growing way up and around it, like a vine. Back at the park entrance, on the bridge, we spotted a trail of leaf cutter ants heading back to the nest, that Xie had identified on the way in, that morning. We stopped for a bit to watch them carrying their little leaf chunks. When we moved on to the other side of the nest, we saw another trail, where the ants were scavenging from fallen leaves. We stopped again to watch them doing some cutting.
When we got back to the cabaña, it felt awesome to take a shower. This place had hot water, and it was not heated right at the shower, but rather from an external water heater, so the sink also had hot water.
After we all showered, we headed back over to Don Mucho’s for dinner. Xie and CM got beers, while Jess got a chocolaty shake. While Xie and CM were tasting each other’s beers, CM managed to knock Xie’s over and spill a bunch of it on her. Our waiter was busy, confused and confusing. While taking our order, he was constantly glancing around to other tables, and he kept switching which pad he was writing on, from a handful of four or five. Xie ordered a carne asada, but the waiter was worried that they might be out, so she placed a backup order of mole chicken enchiladas. CM ordered pollo en mole. After a few minutes he came back and told Jess that her original order was unavailable, so she switched to mole enchiladas also.
The whole time that we were there, a band was getting ready to play. It was funny, because different people kept going up on stage and doing sound checks on the mics and drums, then they’d get off the stage and nothing would happen for a while again. By the time that they started playing, we were basically done with our meals. The band started with a couple of traditional Mexican songs, then they played a samba, then they picked up electric instruments and started playing reggae music. Xie left shortly after they started, to go and wash her beer drenched clothes and put them up to dry. She returned to the cabaña (named “Iguana”) to wash her clothes in the sink, and go to bed. Jess and CM returned after listening to some more of the music, then went to bed too.
