To the Ruins of Palenque

So after leaving San Cristobel, we caught the early morning bus towards Palenque. No major issues with the bus you’ll be glad to hear, although I wouldn’t advise trying to use the toilet facilities standing up on these buses…. After a few sudden stops for speed bumps, and a few bends in the road, I was way too close to wearing my own pee!

So anyway, on arrival, we managed to find a decent enough hotel (Hotel Chablis) near town, and went on a wander to find a local tour agency in order to book a trip to the ruins of Palenque. The tour guide we met was a great fella, and straight down the line, which is great when you are in a new place…. He seemed really proud of his town also, as he kept saying how much he loved it, it was only when I turned round to look out of the window to see a convoy of cars and vans with 18/19 yr olds in every spot they could squeeze into, along with an attractive young girl on the top of each of the roofs wearing fairly little, did I know why he loved his town

so much!. It was the universities annual beauty contest, and they were trying to drum up votes….!

I had very little idea as to what state the ruins here would be in, and to how big the sight was, so I was more than impressed when we got there. The city was original occupied around 100BC but flourished around 615 AD and was abandoned in 900AD it was then not rediscovered until 1746. It was therefore pretty awesome to see so many of the ruins intact. The site itself is also huge, and therefore so much to see there. I’ll not bore you with any more facts, but hopefully you can appreciate how cool this place was from the pictures attached. Whilst taking in the sights around us, we had heard that there was a possibility of seeing Toucans whilst at the sight, and therefore I took this to be a bit of a challenge to see one, a challenge I might add, that I gladly accepted! They are quite rare in Mexico, but I simply took this stat, that people were not looking hard enough! So anyway, the hunt was on!

After looking around the Palenque site,

we also had a couple of waterfalls to see that were included on our day trip. The first of these waterfalls was Misol Ha which was huge, and really quite powerful. You could get in behind the waterfall here too within a cave, which gave you a real close up of what it was all about, and that was pretty awesome. Being that the waterfall was so loud and crazy, I took this to be the reason I hadn’t seen any of the aforementioned Toucans yet! But hey, no big deal, we still had another waterfall to see, and this one was halfway into the Mexican Jungle….if they are gonna hang out anywhere, it’s gotta be here surely!

So, onto the next waterfall, Agua Azul, and this really was something a bit special! It wasn’t really a waterfall, but several of them all linking together from a mile or so upstream, and again, hopefully the pictures give you an idea as to how impressive they were, although I’m sure they won’t do it real justice.

By now, I started to dislike Toucans. I felt they were toying with me, and it really did become a small obsession that

I find one. Not only were they alluding me, and laughing at me (I assumed they were laughing?), but I was to care for them even less, when my quite feeble play on words earlier in the day when trying to spot them of ‘’So, they’re not gonna come out, well, TOUCAN play that game’’ (your right, it’s a rubbish play on words, and doesn’t really make any sense!) well, anyhow, I said it, and it massively backfired on me. Now, I had the annoyingly catchy R&B tune ‘Two can play that game’ by Bobby Brown fully in my head, and on constant loop, and there was no getting rid of it. Not ideal when drawing a blank on Toucan spotting, nor at all come to mention it! Saying all this though, we had a fantastic day on the trip, exploring ruins, waterfalls etc. and even though I had that song in my head, it really was a great trip.

You will be glad to hear that I actually finally saw a Toucan, right at the end of the day! A big one it was too, and luckily there is a picture attached for you all to see…..Yay!!
Next

stop Merida in order to see one of the new wonders of the world, Chichen Itza….

There are more photos at the bottom of this page

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