Palenque - in the province of Chiapas

26-29 July Palenque

Palenque enchants from the first moment: we get off, move into our Cabaña at the top of the jungle edge, quickly change and then jump into the cool hotel pool. Barely in the water, we hear unfamiliar noises around us, which I can't describe. Shortly afterwards, we recognize a howler monkey family in the tall trees around the pool. There are at least 7 animals making their way through the branches. The leader goes ahead and makes a daring jump onto a low bamboo bush! All the members of the monkey family follow his example - even the little ones who fearlessly jump into the depth with all fours stretched out! Impressive. This is still a welcome gift - we have never seen wild monkeys in the jungle before and have only been here for 15 minutes and then something like this. After that, we have our first Chelada: beer with pure lime juice (the glass rim is dipped in salt - wow)

At night, we wake up about 2 or 3 times because the howler monkeys live up to their name and make a concert. Through the exchange between the families, we get a vague idea of the vastness of the forest. Otherwise, we sleep deeply and soundly.

Besides the howler monkeys, there are many other creatures as we soon realize: hummingbirds, all kinds of spiders (one ran over Roman's face at night, ooh), and at noon we startle a Rat snake that was sleeping in the sun. Rat snake is a constrictor snake and our specimen was about 1 meter 70 long, really, and very beautiful to look at. It fled up the stream, swam underwater, and we were quite amazed.

Today we go to the ruins of Palenque in the jungle, of course not without having to fight our way through the numerous food and souvenir stands. We are even offered a car washing and guarding service! The ruins are on a slope and are partially covered by the jungle. The circular path takes just under half an hour in the end, we have actually reserved a whole day... Only about 5% of the city has been excavated and even less can be visited because of Covid. The city is nice, but not as impressive as expected. For the first time, we get to know a Chicharra, a cicada species that sounds like a circular saw, no kidding. It is almost as loud and accompanies us on various future nights in the jungle. After that, we hike for an hour on a Sendero through the jungle and can discover one or the other animal. Amelia has a painful encounter with a (tiny) fire ant that bites her finger. The pain is huge and still hurts occasionally the next day. You can still see the sting a week later. Small animals, big impact! Later, we end the broken day by lying around and reading. Even in our accommodation, the ants seem to feel at home: more and more of them get lost in our shower until the floor is covered with dead animals. Even a ghost mantis lies on the floor, confusingly crushed, although we were not in the room. Despite the cleaning action, the six-legged creatures are again our guests in masses the next morning.

As yesterday, there is live music for evening entertainment, this time from a French woman who sings her songs in different languages with a guitar. Once again, we order way too much food and end up with a whole pizza left for tomorrow noon.

The next day I wake up with a scorpion next to my head. Quite exciting as a first encounter! I catch it and release it into freedom. After the little shock, we take a trip to the Agua Azul waterfalls, which flow in several cascades along the river course. The drive takes 1.5 hours and is quite curvy. On the way, we buy some sack of round yellow fruits that don't taste like anything we like. We quickly give them to the Mexican man upon arrival.

The falls seem to be a major tourist attraction, as there are numerous restaurants and shops along the riverbank offering their goods. It is only in the upper area that you are alone with the river. Nevertheless, we decide against swimming, as the number of bathing opportunities is rather scarce compared to the number of tourists.

We find out how pushy street vendors can be, among other things, on the return trip, where a horde of children stops a tour bus from continuing and later we are asked to buy something by a rope stretched across the road. After almost an hour, we make a stop at the Misol-ha waterfall, which is absolutely worth seeing despite contrary recommendations! Only we bathe in the pool below the falls and later follow the other tourists who enjoy different perspectives on the path behind the waterfall.

A last evening in our great accommodation lets us dream of the upcoming trip to Calakmul.