Mexico

In order to get from Flores to Palenque in Mexico, we again braved a shuttle bus as everything we’d read about using public transport made it sound like a nightmare.  Even by shuttle the journey took 9 hours and involved 2 buses and a boat!  We had a slightly nervous moment at Mexican immigration as Le Roux’s South African passport caused a few issues, but eventually he was let in – phew!

We stayed in El Panchan, a little village in the jungle 5 miles down the road from Palenque, as recommended in the guide book.  We found a great jungle cabin right by a little river for a bargain price.  There was wildlife all around us and we were woken in the small hours by a particularly active and noisy howler monkey who’d taken a liking to the tree above our cabin.  He managed to keep up his howling for several hours and we didn’t get a great night’s sleep.  Groggily crawling out of bed in the morning we stepped onto our deck to see a couple of herons fishing in the little river, so I quickly grabbed my camera.

We spent a few hours wandering around the ruins at Palenque, taking in the various palaces and temples.  The temples are not as tall as Tikal but more restoration work has been carried out on the buildings and they are bigger with many more carvings and inscriptions.  All around the site were souvenir vendors with their wares laid out on blankets.  I really liked the limestone mouldings but buying one would not really help my luggage weight issue so I had to be content with photos instead.  I also developed an obsession with Mayan symbols which are so lovely.  I took so many close up photos and even bought a little carved stone of my Mayan birth sign.

Our next stop was Misol-Ha, a waterfall 45 minutes away, which you could walk behind.  This was only a quick stop though on the way to Agua Azul, which was a beautiful series of limestone pools, a bit like Semuc Champey in Guatemala.  We spent 3 hours here wandering all the way up the hill as far as we could, before taking a swim in some of the pools – very refreshing on a hot day! Le Roux also couldn’t resist the rope swing. 

There were heaps of vendors all the way along the path selling both souvenirs and food.  We succumb to the wafts of empanada and sampled a few from various stalls.  The fruit stalls were selling mango lollies which the ladies made by carving the fruit but still leaving it attached to the stone – pretty impressive as I have yet to cut up a mango in an aesthetically pleasing way despite trying many different ways.

When we were dropped back in El Panchan, we walked back to our cabin a different way and came across a much nicer restaurant with a wood fired pizza oven – it wasn’t hard to decide what we were going to have for dinner that night!  Very nice it was too when it finally arrived as the waiter thought we were sharing one between two and didn’t request mine – he obviously didn’t know me!

From Palenque we were headed for San Cristobel.  Luckily for my back and knees, the buses in Mexico are proper coaches so we had a far more comfortable journey than the ones we’d suffered in Guatemala.  San Cristobel was a lovely colonial city, much like Antigua in Guatemala.  We found a lovely hostel only a few blocks from the main square and we spent much of our time in the city wandering around soaking up the atmosphere and the architecture.  We climbed various hills and steps and were rewarded with some lovely views over the city.  

We also stumbled upon a cookery school so we decided to have a 2hr lesson in cooking Mexican cuisine.  We had a great time with our tutor even though she spoke very little English.  The lesson got off to a great start with a shot of something tequila like which put fire in our bellies! We then made chalupas which looked very simple, but tasted amazing.  They were fried small tortillas topped with refried beans, grated beetroot and carrot, shredded lettuce, Mexican salsa, cream and guacamole – so good and pretty healthy!  We’ll definitely be making them again.  

We also tried various other Mexican dishes while we were in the city including pozole – a meat and corn soup; sope – a soft small tortilla topped with salad and meat; and mole chicken – a rich dark sauce made with chocolate and spices.  We also succumbed to the traditional Mexican sweet treat – a churros – deep fried batter filled with a flavoured sweet sauce – yummy but so naughty! 

San Cristobel had more than its share of jewellery shops and I was somewhat taken by the Mayan symbol jewellery and after dragging Le Roux into the shop about 5 times, he bought me a lovely bracelet for my birthday and I got some earrings too – Dad – they’re from you for my birthday!

After a couple of nights we had to move on to Mexico City for our flight to San Francisco.  Our last long bus journey – a 14 hour overnight job which we survived, although we didn’t get much sleep as the bus kept stopping at check points throughout the night so various officials could board the bus and request details from passengers.

Mexico City was a pleasant surprise.  For some reason I had expected a dirty, crowded, unsafe place, but it was pretty clean, spacious and actually quite nice.  We didn’t have much time there though, but we did manage to walk to the main park and visit the Anthropology Museum which was great.  We only saw a few of the exhibitions though as there were so many.  We picked out the Maya one, along with the Introduction to Anthropology, and the Aztecs.  It was all very interesting and they have some amazingly preserved artefacts, including the jade burial mask of one of the rulers of Palenque – Jaguar Serpent II.  

Lunch in the museum cafe was also an entertaining experience as the resident squirrels leapt from the trees onto the umbrellas and peered over the edge, eyeing up our lunch!

Our two months in Central America had come to an end and it was time to move on to our US road trip.  We had mixed feelings about leaving as we ran out of time to do much in Mexico, but we were really looking forward to being in a developed country again after 7 months in 3^rd world countries, and to not having to lug our back packs around on buses.  We need to come back and visit many more places in Mexico to get a proper feel of the place so I can’t tick this country off my list just yet, but what we did squeeze into 5 days was lovely and left us wanting more.