Palenque & Christmas Day

Christmas Day felt like any other to me. I was glad I was spending it in a beautiful place. There was no Internet available here, so no contact with the outside world. In fact, none of the hotels we'd stayed at had Internet so I have to wait till I get home to post the rest of my blogs. Due to the loss of my journal, I started scrawling notes to help remember bits and pieces along the way...

Today I opted for an all-day tour, along with about half the group. First we went to another set of famous ruins, Palenque! We didn't get a guide on this tour so I don't think I got as much out of it as the others. Having said that, they have all become a blur since the trip. I'm glad I took so many photos. Thank goodness for Wikipedia...and all the books I'd already read about the sites...At least I can look up the info anytime I want.

I do remember it was a large site - actually much smaller than Tikal, but still. Much of it was still in the jungle. I stuck to the parts that were cleared. It involved a lot of hiking up pyramids. This was cool because it's good exercise, plus it's stunning to look down at the site and it made me feel good that I could do it. It was a cloudy day which was good because when the sun did appear it was hot and humid. It turned out to be not so good though, because maybe less than an hour in, it started to rain. I had lost my rain jacket which was bad news. My cotton hoodie got soaked and didn't dry until I could get to a lavenderia in San Cristobal a couple of days later. Nothing dries in the jungle...

Karine and I headed for the museum. It was a long walk and we each took a photo of each other absolutely soaked, along the way! We ended up going to a little anthropological museum. I was really excited because it was the first time I got to see all the artifacts that had been hauled off the sites. They were so beautiful. As fate would have it I noticed a glass door into a special area. The note on the door said it was only unlocked once an hour. Suddenly the door opened so of course I went inside. I was a little worried because no one knew where I was and we had to meet the bus in about 40 minutes. I didn't want to be locked in for an hour and find I'd missed the bus!

Inside I was treated to a set of 5-minute movies about the archeological discovery of a fantastic tomb of a king named Pacal. The movies had English subtitles (a rare thing!) so I was able to understand. The archaeologist recounted how he unsealed a vault, climbed down a steep dark staircase, unsealed another door and entered a beautiful white room that looked like glowing white ice crystal. The walls were covered in a smooth, shiny white mineral from the water that had slowed seeped into the room over hundreds of years. There was a sarcophagus in the centre - about the size of a double bed and taller. It had ornate carvings all over it. It had been moved into that room, so we got to see it. Stunning! It was in perfect condition, like brand new. The carvings and the pure whiteness of the stone were exquisite. On the lid, the "king" rested in the arms of the tree of life like a child. The idea of rebirth.

Here's some info on it, which you can skip over if not of interest: "The lid of the sarcophagus is carved with an amazing exposition on Classic Maya concepts of life, death, and resurrection. It also incorporates a wealth of astronomical information, including an image of the World Tree, which connected the levels of the universe. The imagery and text also allude to Pakal's role as a personification of the Maize God who, according to Maya creation mythology, died and was resurrected from the back of a turtle carapace. The sides of the sarcophagus were carved with images of Pakal's ancestors, all emerging from a crack in the earth with a fruit tree, as if forming an ancestral orchard."
(from: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://webspace.utexas.edu/jgk1102/images/49_palenque.gif&imgrefurl=https://webspace.utexas.edu/jgk1102/maya_palenque.html&usg=__m0AyperyIAD0v2F8wAi3Ag35CVI=&h=300&w=320&sz=70&hl=en&start=6&um=1&tbnid=4a6pU72EbQuZcM:&tbnh=111&tbnw=118&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpalenque%2Bsarcophagus%2Blid%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1)


I really lucked out gettin to see that. I had seen a drawing of the lid in one of my books. Seeing it for real was amazing.

From there a shuttle van took us to some waterfalls, then drove a long way through the steep mountains of Chiapas to go to a swimming place - waterfalls with cascading pools of smooth, polished limestone rock. I could hear my ears popping as we climbed altitude. The view was gorgeous - lush green mountains with stepped fields, palm trees and indigenous homes built into the mountain-side. I snapped some shots from the window as we zipped by.

The site is owned by the Zapatistas. A few of them with guns stopped us by a shed with some very cool murals. Someone in our van was able to get a shot of it before they indicated no photos! I would LOVE to have that photo. We paid them a fee and moved on. The place was packed. The weather improved but it was a little chilly for swimming. Some people were. Instead I walked up and up and up and the levels of waterfalls that just never seemed to end. Alongside, the whole way up, were indigenous handicrafts stalls and restaurants.  As a Canadian, used to wilderness and wide open spaces, all I wanted to do was find a quiet place to sit by myself and relax. I finally did when I got back down to the bottom, behind some restaurants and cabins, by the water. At that point I decided no more all-day tours that involved bussing to three different sites, two of them gimmicky, forced to buy lunch at expensive restaurants, and subjected to hordes of tourists. It's not that the waterfalls weren't beautiful, but I don't they would have been my first choice for how I wanted to spend my afternoon.

that night back at the jungle hotel, we had a group dinner at the outdoor restaurant again, and a secret Santa exchange - the idea was to buy a small gift for 20 pesos ($2) and have a bit of fun. I had picked a hand-painted bird - maybe a parrot or quetzal, and added a Mayan chocolate that looked like a number or letter from the Mayan alphabet or calendar. I received a beautiful painted heart box and necklace from Suzie. I was very touched as she had clearly exceeded our price limit and went out of her way to give me something special. She kept telling me I was a very special person the whole trip. I didn't quite know how to take this as I barely knew her. "I'll never forget you," she'd say. She sometimes brought tears to my eyes telling me this. It was a magical night.

That night I drank some water from my metal canteen. It tasted weird. It had been in there for two days. Maybe in the jungle, that's not such a good idea...