Via Byway, My Way.

So I’ve been lucky enough to find an Internet Cafe here in Palenque to hold me over until my 10pm “overnight” bus to Campeche.  I say “overnight” because I’ll actually arrive around 3am, and since I don’t want to linger around in the streets of the town at that early morning, I’ll probably just hang out at the bus station and try to stay awake until the morning light comes and I can safely walk the 20 blocks to the hostel.

I’m glad to be heading out of Palenque…the place I stayed at last night, El Campan, is about 4 miles outside of town and is kind of a hippie place with palapas and cabanas in the woods.  My little hut had wire screen windows, and creepie crawlies everywhere, because my hut had the windows with a few tears here and there.  And where was my toilet paper (TP isn’t in the bathrooms, you either have to buy your own or they’ll leave you a roll in your “room”)…I was able to steal some at a restaurant across the road, I’m not ashame to admit that because they own the restaurant too.  So on with the pics, short attention span theater style!

My cabana is the one on the right.  It was soo hot during the entire night, and when I woke up in the morning my bed sheet was covered with insects and debris that fell from the trees above.

Another view.  El Campan has about 6 properties all adjacent to one another, and each has about 10 cabanas to rent out.  It’s like camping out at the Oregon Country Fair in Veneta, OR. 

Looking into my cabana.  I fell asleep to the serenade of all the jungle sounds, including howling monkeys, thousands of insects, some chirping bird that apparently lives amongst the leaves of my cabana, and the breeze when it decided to give me a little breath of coool.

Today I signed up for a tour to take in 3 of the area’s attractions….the Palenque archeological ruins, Misol-Ha waterfall, and Aqua Azul river.

This photo was taken from the top of Templo de la Cruz, looking towards Templo de las Inscripciones, and to the right is El Palacio.

Templo de la Cruz.

Looking down from Templo de la Cruz to Templo del Sol.

Templo del Conde.

After 4 hours at the site, it was time to move on to Misol-Ha waterfall, where time did not permit a swim, but did give me time to go behind the falls and up to the cave.

From the front….

And from behind the falls.

From the cave, and you can see all the peeps trying to make their way to where I stand.

Now, on towards Agua Azul…but first let’s see if I make it there in one piece.  So I’m in the front seat, there are 8 other passengers taking up the seats behind me.  It is about an hour drive along narrow, winding roads with a pretty steep drop on the right hand side.  And my driver is sleepy!  All the signs are there, I know because I have done the exact same thing…

– turning up the music and trying to sing along to it.

– rolling down the window, even though the AC is on, and letting in all that HOT air! 

– she had a small handtowel that she kept bringing to her mouth and wiping her face…not because of sweat, but because it was her way of trying to stay awake.

– she kept fidgeting around, shuffling in her seat, dropping things on the floor and then trying to search with her free hand….all methods to stay awake.

– and then the obligatory slap slap slap of her hand to her cheeks, and then hitting her let with her fist…stay awake, stay awake, I watch her heavy eyes and her concentration wane.  But in the end, one hour was just enough, we arrived safely and she could have a 3 hour nap.

Agua Azul is probably the most beautiful swimming spot I’ve ever encountered, even besting Semuc Champey from 3 weeks ago.   The wide river creates great shallow pools for swimming and snorkeling, with little rope swings sprinkled about and so many families, young and old alike, playing in the water.  Along the bank is a walking path filled with comedor restaurants and vendors selling fruits, empanadas, souvenirs, refrescos and more.  The cool thing about the river is that it is not just confined to one area for swimming.  I walked upstream a good 30 minutes and all along were little prime spots for swimming or relaxing in the water or resting under a small waterfall.  Agua Azul is one that you’ll have to put on your “must visit” list for Mexico!  Assorted pics below…

I’ll wrap up this post with a few more points of “Sounded Like a Good Idea, But”

– Having a roasted corn on the cob in San Cristobal.  But the one I got must have been the one that was roasting for a full week, those kernels were so hard and I could only eat half of the cob before I had to give up.

– Being all tropical and buying a fresh whole coconut at Agua Azul, where the vendor cuts a little hole, slips a straw into it and you can just sip sip sip and enjoy some coconut juice.  But after only a few sips, it just didn’t taste good and it gave me some stomach pains later on.

– Saving my Propel water for an opportune time.  Propel is like Gatorade in a cool little plastic bottle, this whole time it has been untouched until last night when I was out of water and I broke the plastic seal and took a few sips.  Good stuff!  But this morning I packed it wrong, and before I knew it, all the liquid spilled out and all over my pack inside the van.  Bye bye Propel, I should have drank it a long long time ago instead of see it waste away this morning.

– Horseback riding while I’m trying to recover from being sick.  Yeah, I already went over this in my previous post, but I can still feel my body crashing up and down in the saddle and not enjoying myself one bit.  I think my horse had it out for me.

That’s all for now, off to the bus station and I hope I don’t get harrassed!  I could always use my fake Asian accent/language, that always seems to throw them off.  Have a nice Friday and weekend everyone!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 20th, 2006 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.