Wednesday, November 23, 2005

That's the song that's been in my head, sung to the tune of "Funky Town." It was cute for about a minute. Palenque town is kind of blah. It's one of those one-purpose towns (this one being ruin-visiting) and is choked with travel agencies and hotels and not much else. But it still isn't as bad as Mazatlan.

We arrived after dark and couldn't find the map in the Lonely Planet so we wandered around for a bit trying to find a hotel the old fashioned way. We found several spots too pricey to even bother looking at and one cheap spot that Michael refused to stay in. Which I was glad of, because it was icky. The boy who showed us the room looked pissed that we didn't want it.

Then we lucked out and found quite a decent room for only $100 pesos. There was a bit of gum on the wall next to the bed, but someone had tried very hard to remove as much of it as they could.

After checking in, we went out for a late dinner of tacos at a spot close by the hotel. Hmm, these tacos. I don't know. I didn't like the looks of the meat, so only ordered two, thank goodness, because I couldn't eat them no matter how much hot sauce I doused them in. I guess when you think about it, the word "beef" isn't really limited to the desirable parts of the cow. Luckily Michael had no issues eating them.

I was the one who pushed for Palenque. Not that Michael argued against it, just that I was the one always bringing it up. I love ruins. And I proved my sincere desire to go there by actually getting up first and being out of the (cold) shower before Michael woke up. I wanted to spend as much time as possible there.

The most common way of getting to the ruins is to stand on the main street and flag down the appropriately-labeled van. It's $10 pesos per person and will take you directly to the entrance to the ruins. This is fine in theory, but we didn't know which direction we were going in. We asked our hotel manager, but his pointing was as vague as the Indian head-bobble, so we ended up going to the wrong side of the street. Luckily, he was nice enough to run out and correct us, and then flag down a minivan for us.

Palenque is fabulous. I loved it. They're still excavating, but there is enough uncovered so that you can ramble around for a decent while without hitting the outside world. My favorite part was the Palacio, because it's full of sudden staircases and rambling tunnels and underground passageways which you can actually explore. It's off-season, so the place wasn't too crowded and we had the Palacio to ourselves.

Palenque is in the jungle, and the home of howler monkeys. Howler monkeys! Luckily we already happened to know what they sound like, because I would have been terrified if I heard that sound without knowing it was only monkeys. When they started up, an Australian couple came tearing out of the trees thinking they had heard jaguars. It was funny for a while, but they were some noisy folks, and after a while it's time to calm down and appreciate the ruins, I would think, but if you were them, I would be wrong. I was glad when they left... they were louder than the howler monkeys.

We liked it so much that we were still there at closing and had to be shooed out. We went a bit out of our way to come here, but I'm so glad we did. There's no point in staying in Palenque town if you're not going to the ruins, so that means this is our last night in Mexico. It's hard to believe. Mexico's been great and we'd be sad to leave if we weren't so excited about going on to Guatemala.

Thanks, Mexico!

HOURS ON THE BUS: 89

 

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Templo de las Inscriptiones/Temple of the Inscriptions.

Me with some giant leaves.

Rabbit or deer skull at the base of a column on the Templo de la Calavera/Temple of the Skull.

In the tomb of La Reina Roja.

View of the Templo del Sol/Temple of the Sun from Templo de la Cruz.

Templo de la Cruz/Temple of the Cross.

Templo de la Cruz Foliada/Temple of the Foliated Cross.

Palenque's Palacio.

Palacio again.

Another view of the palace.

Remnants of a carving at the Palacio.

Close-up of the Palacio's observatory.

Michael in a pensive moment at the Temple of the Count.

Me acting crazy at the Temple of the Crazy Count.

The Northern Group.