Palenque

The Temple of the Inscriptions
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It took us a day to get by bus from Merida to Palenque. Unfortunately I had terrible muscle cramps, so spent most of the day doubled-over in pain & most of the evening in the local doctor's surgery. He seemed to think that the pain was a side-effect of my anti-malaria pills, so I have now stopped taking them. It seems as though anti-malaria pills don't like me very much (as this is the second lot of pills I've now had problems with), so I might give up on them altogether in the future.

The Red Tomb
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The next day we went to explore the Mayan ruins of Palenque. This site was first occupied around 100BC & last occupied around 900AD. In its heyday, it was a very large complex - most of which is sill hidden deep within the surrounding jungle waiting to be rediscovered/uncovered. As such, you are only able to explore about 5% of the original complex, although this in itself is very impressive (check out the photos).

Once again we were given a detailed explanation of the design of Mayan buildings & temples - how they were designed using the Mayan calendar(s) & how the sides of each building were painted a specific colour according to the direction they were facing e.g. the east-facing sides were painted yellow as this represented the rising sun etc. Having viewed The Temple of the Inscriptions we moved on to see The Palace where the guide told us how the royals used to deform themselves by strapping blocks of wood to the front & back of their heads to make them long & flat, & also by making themselves go boss-eyed. This basically proved they were special because they didn't need to be able to see properly as they never had to work. 'Special' indeed! Finally we moved on to a group of temples known as Las Cruces (The Crosses) - comprising The Temple of the Foliated Cross, The Temple of the Cross & The Temple of the Sun.

The Castle
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In the afternoon we travelled on to see a couple of waterfalls - firstly Misol-Ha which were pretty but VERY cold (so no swimming for me), & then Agua Azul. Unfortunately our privately rented minibus broke down en route to Agua Azul, but we were rescued by a kindly passing tourist bus who managed to fit most of us in & take us to the falls. Some kindly souls volunteered to stay behind with the broken down bus which was soon fixed by the owner of the bus company. Agua Azul falls were absolutely beautiful - but also far too cold to consider swimming in. I've definitely turned into more of a wuss in my old age :o)

Mayan inscriptions
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After an hour of chilling out beside the falls it was time to get back on the bus & head to San Cristobal. The mad Finnish lass had ordered some food from one of the park restaurants but hadn't had time to eat it so brought it onto the bus with her. Unfortunately it was fish & leaked, so the bus ponged all the way to San Cristobal. Not overly pleasant for the rest of us. Even more unfortunately our private bus broke down for the second time that day & this time we had to wait a lot longer for a passing bus to take pity on us. At least we got to escape our fishy bus, though :o)