Reaching Palenque
After our phenomenal breakfast, we started the long road to Palenque, the site of an ancient Mayan holy city. First up, we passed through Tuxtla-Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas. A fairly modern city, I was amazed at how massive it was, the size being easy to grock since the road through town, which amazingly lacked bad traffic, followed the ridge of a large mountain overlooking the city. Got seperated from dad after stopping for gas, and we both pulled over, with less than a kilometer seperating us, and hailed each other on our radios. Damn things finally paid off! Passed some beautiful lush riverbanks weaving through the cities, overgrown with scenic jungle, punctuated by a man on a wooden canoe net fishing.
Leaving Tuxtla, we immediately began our way up a very steep, very long switchback-filled road. Seemingly climbing to visit Mexican heaven, in no time, we seemed to be higher than ever before. It felt like from here, in one wrong turn, you may fall off the world itself (and past, of course, the elephants, turtle, and whatever else may be down there – I thankfully didn’t find out). The roads were, as seems to be a rule of Mexican mountain roads, terrifying. Miles of big potholes, really bad construction, and dangerous curves.
Within a dozen or so miles of the grand city of Tuxtla, we’d entered the true boonies. The women we passed along the way were dressed in extremely traditional looking dress, all wearing very similar shawls of rich blues and black – no exceptions on the color scheme. Very young children were very plentiful. Women were common, but men and adolescent were quite rare. In need of a bathroom, we stopped so I could use a “pay toilet” which cost about 15 cents. Pay is in quotes because how anyone can make a profit on $.15-per-use toilets is beyond me. Toilet is in quotes because there was no paper, no toilet seat, walls made of wood, and no toilet tank. That last part translates as follows: next to the toilet was a bucket. Above the bucket was a spigot. Flushing entailed filling the disturbing bucket, and pouring it into the toilet. Feeling fantastic after the experience, upon returning to the less oderous world, my dad informed me that a little kid had been trying to steal the things from my jacket, which I’d left on my bike. The kid was still hanging around, running his fingers along the bike, touching things. Uninterested in being robbed, I watched him, and he watched me. “Mucho dinero” he drew out slowly and quietly, nearly under his breath. I looked to an elder of his, an old woman who was watching him for some sort of acknowledgement or help, and she only stared back blankly, as if waiting patiently for him to succeed. I found the entire experience a bit sad, and ultimately, disrespectful even if I could understand wholeheartedly where they were coming from.
We passed through San Cristobol, and headed on towards Palenque, with the goal of arriving at a place called El Panchan, which one of my German friends, Timo, had told me about. More than 100 kilometers before Palanque, the sun began to set. With no other real civilization between us and our destination, we set out winding through the cruel curvy roads in the dark, topping off around 40mph. Cars whizzed by us in both directions, impatiently passing at breakneck speeds in what passed for straightaways. Of the hundreds of cars that passed, only two managed to turn off their brights for me before I did for them. Oy!
Timo had given me a very detailed map with which to find El Panchan and other things of note in Palanque, which was important given our lone headlights revealed little of the darkened world. Before we could use the map though, we had to be on the path to the ruins of Palanque, but first, we ended up, miraculously in one piece (respectively), in the city. The urban center of Palanque was ugly and full of traffic, and particularly hard to navigate at night. My dad questioned a local for directions to the ruins, and the guy, for one of the first times, pointed us in exactly the right direction.
El Panchan is a remnant of the hippie movement if ever there was one. A bazaar of restaurants and cabañas built into the jungle in a jumble of thatch, wood, and mosquito netting, the place had become to popular they had their own signs pointing to the different establishments. Timo had recommended a place called Margarita and Ed’s, which had supposedly the cleanest cabañas. We were told it was full, and ended up in a place called “El Jaguar” which was the seemingly bargain-rate place, being the only one across the major street from the rest of El Panchan. It was definitely a bargain, plus it had the authentic Mexican quality of being directly insidethe gate to the Palanque ruins. Guarded more or less 24 hours a day friendly Mexicans with automatic weapons, people would insist in the morning we buy a pass to enter, but this night and likely most, you could pass right by the guy, and he’d say good evening. Our first night, he was reading a book with his assault rifle laying in his lap.
We moved into our Cabaña, which was a small building with a thatched roof, tons of mosquito netting, a horribly contrived door locking system, and two uncomfortable beds. Communal showers and toilets were just down the dirt path. Back over in El Panchan proper, we caught dinner at the horribly-named and horribly-popular Don Mucho’s restaurant. Completely packed with the strangest group of young hippies, the place seemed horribly out of place this far from San Francisco. It also sported a live Peruvian pan flute band, much to our chagrin.
Somehow, we ate breakfast there as well anyways, and then headed to the ruins. Still way behind on my picture uploading, I’ll follow this up with a post of pictures dedicated to what I saw in the ruins of Palanque, but I’ll start by saying no words can come nearly close to adequetely describing the place. Further attempts at description to follow.