Palenque

Palenque is a Mayan city that was claimed by the jungle about 900 years ago. Like most of the sites, most of it is still under mounds of earth, jungle and rubble. A few years ago a team pulled out all the fancy gear and did a complete survey of the land and the building count went from a few hundred up to several thousand overnight. The vast majority of them have not been looked at. Palenque's biggest pyramid is almost invisiable and is still completely covered by the jungle, no one is sure when it will be looked at.

For me it was a toss up between Tikal and Palenque over which I enjoyed more. Palenque doesn't have as impressive temples as Tikal, but it setting is great. Up on a hillside, it looks out over the plain. One half of it is still partially enveloped by jungle while the other half is all lawn and trees, so it feels like you're walking through an ornate park.

Palenque's star attraction would have to be the Palace. Admittedly, I probably preferred the three temples in the corner more, but the Palace is a nice place to walk around, it has a maze of rooms on top with glimpses of frescos and plaster so you can get a feel for what it must have been like there.

We were there on the equinox, so much to our surprise, we had the group of people there doing whatever things you do on equinoxs; standing around in circles, holding hands, chanting, facing the sun. I have no idea what they were doing (and from the looks on some of the faces, neither did some of them), but it was a really cool setting for them to be doing it.

Inside the grounds at Palenque is a really cool waterfall. If you walk from the grounds down to the museum, you'll go past it. It's very nice, but you can't go swimming there. However, walk down the road, hang a left and you can get to a waterfall where you can go swimming. Well, a paddle really, not really large enough for a swim, but a welcome spot to dip your toes into.

The hotel we had in Palenque was as close to the ruins as you could get. It had a range of accomidation options, we were in the cabins, but they had just grass huts with hammocks or just space on the lawn to pitch a tent or park your RV (there were two massive RVs from Canada). I was glad we had a cabin, since one night a tropical thunderstorm went right over our heads.

Luckily most of us had walked back from dinner and remained dry. Some though got wet (my roommate arrived looking like a drowned rat and leaving puddles on the floor) The rain was unbelievably heavy, like standing under a firehose, you'd think it couldn't get any worse... and it would just get heavier. There was thunder going off at the same time as the lightning, the roof began to leak directly over my bed. I do love a good storm.