Welcome to the Jungle

Well, we are here in the midst of the Chiapas jungle, just down the road from ancient Mayan ruins, and wouldn't you know it, we still found an internet place from which to do a blog post. Of course, the computers run on ancient Mayan digital technology, meaning they're a little slow, but we take what we can get.

We got into Palenque just before 7am this morning after our all-night bus ride. After first watching an episode of Dirty Jobs without the sound on and then watching the movie The Last Mimzy (a very strange movie about a stuffed but highly advanced bunny rabbit sent from the future and discovered by two children who must figure out how to send it back so that people in the future can resolve the complete deterioration of Earth's environment--I could describe it more, but it's not worth it; you get the idea), we got on to the most important part of the trip: sleeping. We brought Dramamine and took some in the hopes of getting a boost in the sleep department, and it seemed to pay off for Emily, who nodded off during the movie. I, on the other hand, was having great difficulty getting anything like comfortable in my seat. I spent the night cycling between half-asleep and half-awake (I know, I can do the math, but you get the idea), periodically checking out our late night path over millions of speed bumps on the highway in the middle of nowhere. When we finally, arrived in Palenque, I was pretty well exhausted. Even Emily's slightly better success didn't leave her brigh- eyed and bushy-tailed when we got off the bus.

After passing up a full-day tour of Palenque and the surrounding area offered at the bus station, Emily and I caught a cab and came down the road to an area known as El Panchán, a collection of cabins and campgrounds near the ruins. We walked from place to place here looking for availability with little luck, until we finally found a cabin available at a place called El Jaguar, where we are now set to spend the night. We dropped our stuff, and then we set off on our real adventure: exploring the ruins.

Palenque is absolutely stunning. The actual Mayan city was tremendous, and they are continuing to uncover new structures in ongoing archeological work. To walk through the whole thing would likely take days. The area we explored (with the help of a good guide) was basically the city center. As we entered the site, we saw to our right a sequence of ancient tombs, including one of the more famous buildings at the site, called El Templo de las Inscripciones for the hieroglyphics found at its top, which was the tomb for the first and most important king of the city, a man who ruled for 68 years during the city's peak. Very interestingly, this guy, Pakal, was actually the first male ruler of Palenque, following centuries of matriarchy. His mother was a queen, but had no daughters, so she pushed for and attained the coronation of her son at the young age of 12. Pakal went on to live to the ripe old age of 80--quite an achievement back then.

In another one of the tombs, called the tomp of the Red Princess, we got to go in the tomb and actually see the sarcophagous that gave the tomb its name. It's painted a deep red that you can still see very well. They found a woman inside whose identity and role is unknown, leading them to simply dub her the red princess.

We then spent a lot of the morning walking up, around, and even inside a large structure known as El Palacio. The Palace was a meeting center for the kings and high priests, and contains a great number of reliefs and paintings that can still be made out clearly all over. In one section, huge stone reliefs depicted prisoners from Palenque's wars with its neighbors. Palenque apparently was constantly engaged in war with little success, meaning it had to pay taxes to other nearby cities, always in the form of cacao, which was used like money back then (those were the days, eh? Paying in chocolate. Like Hannukah gelt, but valuable). Another part of El Palacio had a long wall with small, circular reliefs (head and shoulders) of the most important people in the city--imagine walking down the hall of the White House and seeing the portraits of past presidents all in a row, and you get the effect these things had. It was a very modern-feeling feature for such an ancient site. We also got to go down into the depths of the Palace, where we got to see the sleeping places of the wealthy and the royals: huge stone beds that would have (one can only hope) been covered with several layers of more comfortable material for sleeping.

We walked through a bit more of the site with the guide, including a trip up one of the pyramids and a brief explanation of the stone cover of Pakal's sarcophogus, which depicts Pakal in the midst of a Ceiba tree, which the Mayans believe connected this world with the underworld and the heavens, and which was integral in the path of reincarnation. This particular part of the tour was conducted as a sneaky sales pitch, as the depiction of the cover was actually a painting on leather that we were then offered for purchase. No deal. Amusingly, there's a Swiss guy who believes that if you turn the picture 90 degrees, the depiction is actually Pakal flying a spaceship away, lending support to the theory that the ancient Mayans were actually extraterrestrials. Our guide assured us this wasn't true. But we saw the latest Indiana Jones, so we know the truth.

This is Emily now, taking the controls from Michael for what will now offically be our first joint post. Woo-hoo. So I wanted to tell you about the last part because it was my favorite. After an unimpressive lunch with unimpressive service we went back into the park to walk to the museum of the site, located down the road. The walk follows a path that winds through the jungle intermittently wandering past more ruins of less importance (or at least less researched and restored) and beautiful waterfalls. You could see huge trees grown up through the foundations of some of the buildings, the roots literally shattering the careful stone work as the jungle worked to take back the land. It was easy to imagine the awe that the Spanish explorers must have felt as they came upon the abandoned city in the jungle. The skull carvings and masks on some of the buildings are the stuff that pops out at you in Indiana Jones movies and makes you jump. I like to imagine the surprise and awe they must have felt coming up on such things in the midst of the wild with the screams of howler monkeys, and the quiet but constant whirr of the jungle noises all around. I highly recommend you all come visit some time.

After our walk through the jungle we spent a little time in the Museum, but at this point were pretty exausted so we didn't wait for the next tour of the replica of the tomb Michael described earlier. Instead we walked back to our little Cabaña and took a long nap. After our night on the bus it was much needed. On a side note there are really cool lizards everywhere here that have these puny little front arms like a T-Rex that they only use to prop themselves up on when they are at rest. When they run, the pick up their front half and run with their big powerful back legs. If we had more sophisticated video capabilites we would film it for you.

We are off now for dinner, hope you are all well. Make comments, we like comments.