Category: Chiapas

Today marks 3 weeks on the road and according to Polarsteps I’ve travelled just on 1,799 kilometres (1,119 miles) this week, for a total of 24,174 kilometres (15,021 miles) for the trip so far.

Most of the group decided to head out on a jungle walk from 8AM this morning. Having had many hard slogs though dense vegetation while living in North Queensland, I decided to pass on the morning walk.

We did plan to meet up with the group at 10AM for a guide walk through the Zona Arqueológica Palenque (Palenque Ruins). This saw us on the side of the road like natives and paying 10 pesos each (74 Australian cents) to ride on the “collectivo” local bus to get to the site.

The Palenque ruins date from 226 BC are claimed to be one of the best examples of Mayan structures, with the discovered areas covered up to 2.5 km² (1 square mile), but it is estimated that less than 10% of the total area of the city is explored, leaving more than a thousand structures still covered by jungle.

Compared to the Teotihuacán Pyramids and Zona Arqueológica de Monte Albán sites, the excavated Palenque site is considerably smaller, but a heck of a lot greener obviously – as they hacked the site out of the jungle.

After a couple of hours of climbing up, around and over the site, I decided to cough up the 20 pesos ($1.50 AUD) to catch the collective into Palenque township, located about 10 kilometres (6 miles) away.

After a great lunch at Restaurante Maya Cañada, where I had a grilled Chaya stuffed chicken breast with Xcatic sauce, that was absolutely brilliant.

From there it was siesta time and some serious time in the pool, while sampling mango margaritas – Fitzy happy much 😉

Even though I had a early morning wake-up call set for 3:30, I was up at 3AM to finalize the rest of my gear for our early departure.

We hit the road as scheduled at 4:30 AM, headed for Xoxocotlán International Airport, where we caught the Aeromexico AM2407 service to Mexico City which departed on time at 6:30 AM. With the short 1½ hour layover, we were back in the air on Aeromexico AM507 service to the Carlos Rovirosa Pérez International Airport in Villahermosa, Tobasco arriving at 11AM.

From there it was cramped 3 hour 140 kilometre (90 mile) bus ride to our accommodations at Hotel Maya Bell, which is located deep within the Zona Arqueológica Palenque (Pre-Hispanic City and National Park of Palenque), in the adjoining state of Chiapas.

I had every intention of heading into town to check it out over the afternoon, but had to change rooms as me and pedestal fans don’t have a good working relationship (I’ve had two catch fire over the years). It may have also had something to do with the frozen mango margarita’s, the lure of the pool, my DILLIGAF attitude or a combination of all of the above????

While a few of us were sitting around the pool, word filtered through that one of our female Irish group members had left their phone and passport on the bus and was trying to locate them …. without a lot of success unfortunately.

The evening was spent celebrating one of the group members’ birthday, that included Linda trying to belt the living suitcase out of her piñata – a fun way end to end the day.