Cheap, grimy town, or naff jungle fantasy

The road to Don Muchos
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My girlfriend and I, having only experienced a very poorly excavated Mayan site in Guatemala, were very pleased to find ourselves, one Friday afternoon, in the Spanish colonial city of San Cristobal, Mexico, bound for Palenque, one of the most restored and excavated Mayan ruins in Central America.

Our journey to Palenque, unfortunately, was a little traumatic. The road from San Cristobal is tortuously windy and the large, double decker, first class bus we opted for, on the advice of others who have embarked on long journeys through this part of Central America, did us a disservice. The size of the thing, its top heaviness and the speed with which the road was handled gave the whole experience a kind of ship on the high seas feel that had my stomach churning. As for my attempt at using the amenities, the best I can say for it was that it took place behind a closed door (my pants down, cross between a crash dummy on impact and Mr Bean at his tragic best, bouncing of the walls performance, while no doubt humorous viewing, should a camera have been placed behind the mirror, was painful - I can only be thankful that I escaped without a suspicious wet patch!)

We opted for authentic rainforest, with authentic rainforest streams, quaint bridges and huts authentically fashioned for the purposes of escaping reality-tourism.

View from our hut
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The bus cost 104 Pesos. I later learned that the smaller ‘collectivos’ (stylish ‘A-team’-like vehicles in Chiapas, Mexico - and comfortable too), for the same journey cost 70 pesos and are a pleasant, smooth ride.

Having reached Palenque, the modern town, we opted for what our guidebook informed us was the more expensive but more pleasurable experience of lodging in El Panchan, a conglomeration of wood cabin style hostels situated in subtropical rainforest and, as we soon discovered, serviced by three restaurants, one of which is vegetarian. Palenque, the town, is seemingly more authentically modern Mexico (well, authentically downtrodden Mexico) than the picturesque tourist town of San Christobel (which no doubt has been visually elevated due to its tourism status but is, in actual fact, an authentic colonial town with authentically old cool stuff and no pretence of modernity) but you can offer an individual the experience of being authentically king hit in the face and not find the authenticity of the prospective experience has very strong pulling power. This analogy is a little extreme perhaps, but in truth there is very little positive to be said about the aesthetics of modern day Palenque.

One of the many quaint river bridges
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So we opted for authentic rainforest, with authentic rainforest streams, quaint bridges and bamboo, thatched huts authentically fashioned for the purposes of escaping reality-tourism.

We stayed in the Jungle Palace, which (despite sounding like a Vegas casino) is a very quaint little place with a pleasant garden, wooden huts and a gurgling pebbled river. Our little hut was simple but clean with a kind of 1950’s exotica appeal (I felt like donning a Safari suite, putting on a little Les Baxter lounge music and waxing like a pompous colonial git). We had double doors opening out on to a small veranda with ample view of the river and the bridge that provides access the compound.

A somewhat vaginal water fountain
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For our first meal, having purchased our emergency budget meal supplies in San Cristobal, and concerned, having read in the ever disappointingly incorrect Lonely Planet, that there was only one restaurant and expecting such a monopoly over the nocturnal tourist dollar to generate big prices (certainly unlikely to match the prices of taco’s sold by street vendors in San Cristobal), we had tinned white beans with long life tortillas.

The experience must be relayed.

The white beans tin had a somewhat provocative image of white bean sauce on the front and the advertised additional ingredients of herbs and spices had convinced us that this was pre-made cuisine only in need of the requisite tortillas. The tortillas were in sealed plastic bags with a used by date of 6 weeks from the date of purchase. No doubt pumped with the kind of preservatives that had they been similarly applied to the corpse of Marilyn Monroe in the immediate aftermath of her death, could have her appearing today as a worthy addition to a Hollywood wax museum. The beans were less than we had hoped for. None the less we were satiated (possibly even bloated) once the meal was completed and very pleased with our little budgetary selves for having spent 6 pesos each as opposed to 28 at one of the restaurants*.

On the topic of money (and plastic) saving hints, Pan Chan Integral (the vegetarian restaurant at El Panchan) provides refills of 2 litre bottles for 3 pesos.

The following evening, after our visit to the ruins as the sun set we met an Isreali Mexican, manning his mobile ‘self-made jewellery’ store who, as part of a Bohemian group of guys and girls, had been riding around central America on horse back. He had an equestrian magazine with this big feature on them. The article was in Spanish thus requiring a higher degree of concentration than I was willing to exert at the time, but there were all these photos of all these stunningly beautiful twenty something’s riding horseback, sitting around campfires and generally looking like a Models Inc R&R excursion during an alterative Bohemian fashion craze. I have no idea how they survived. They had been doing it for a year when I met them. I can only assume they had a lot of money to start with. They did buy a horse each before embarking on their journey. What with transport covered and the apparent preference for camping out under the stars, I can only assume their costs to be low. They were also making money from jewellery selling and fire dancing performances.

That night we dinned with some friends we had made sharing the taxi on the journey to El Panchan from the Palenque bus stop - an Israeli girl, Inbalma (who spoke with a sexy lisp) and an all American boy Chris, from Sacramento. The Don specialises, it seems, in satisfying his high paying customers with quality entertainment. We were serenaded by a very talented, travelling Bolivian version of the Patridge family (the drummer must have been around 10, while the bass player was a bashful teenage girl), who played a few numbers that were actually recognizable, one of which, I think, was in the soundtrack to the movie Baraka. This was followed by some fire twirling, fire blowing etc, provided by the travelling hippie fraternity in residents (including the aesthetically appealing equestrians) - all very entertaining. It was here that we shared the aforementioned delicious pizza.

Whether a little removed from reality or not, when it comes to El Panchan, I really can’t complain.

* (see above) In retrospect we had exaggerated our success a little. We have shared most of our meals whilst travelling, thus making a 28 peso meal 14 pesos each. But there’s more. 28 pesos is what was required to buy one of the cheaper, but very tasty, brick oven, pizzas at Don Mucho, the bigger, more established, of the restaurants (more expensive and no doubt more tasty pizzas were priced between 55 and 60). There were however chicken sandwiches (one of which we consumed for breakfast the following day) for 18 pesos at El Monoblanco Restaurant and Bar – an establishment not quite as flash as ‘A lot of Don’ (or however ‘Don Mucho’ would be translated) but quaint enough. Thus we made a grand saving of 6 pesos. I’m on a bit of see-saw here though, as I need to qualify this; pull it back from the other direction (an under-exaggeration), as our Monroe preservatives, tortillas and beans probably provided three times as much substance (if not nourishment) as what that chicken sandwich had to offer (while the latter was by far the tastiest).