Palenque: After La Venta, we set off on another bus to Palenque, a couple hours deeper into the jungle.

Now, I was pretty impressed by the pyramids at Teotihuacan (near Mexico City). I had not expected so much. Those of you who have visited will understand what I mean. The two main pyramids of Teotihuacan are big and impressive. But so are the smaller pyramids and buildings lining the main street (for nearly a full mile). The place makes me feel like an ant dropped into a small child's lego set.

Palenque amazed me for a different reason. It is (was) so advanced, and the architecture was so elegant! There were palaces with towers, buildings with decorative cockscomb, and other features that just made them pretty. There is a story about a European explorer who stumbled upon Palenque and was convinced that he had discovered Atlantis -- not the kind of thing that the indigenous savages could have built; obviously, it was of European descent. He lived out at Palenque for a few years, making his home on the top of the grandest temple. He drew sketches of the place (liberally adding Mediterranean features to the buildings, to reinforce his Atlantean hypothesis) and sent them back home to his friends and family.

Anyhow. As you'd expect, Palenque had pyramids and temples. But there is a palace too, complete with a cool tower. This place is a city. It still feels like one.

After visiting Palenque, we decided to spend the night in the jungle, just outside of the ruins. Maybe two minutes by car from the park there is a small town that was started by one of the first guides at Palenque, and it is full of small businesses (keep in mind it's small, so "full" is not saying much). You can eat or rent a cabin, a room, or a hammock for the night. Stephen pushed for hammocks, but Kristen wasn't exactly keen on sleeping under the stars in a mosquito infested jungle during rainy season. And it's a good thing we opted for shelter too, it poured (and I mean chucked buckets) for a couple of hours later than night. We had a lovely dinner though, and thankfully a few drinks too many. It made it much more fun to find our way back to our room in the sludge and rivers that were once trails. And they calmed us after the discovery of our roommate.

Welcome to the jungle!

Next page: Chiapas!

Email Kristen: kristen@plumgreen.com
Email Stephen: stephen@plumgreen.com