Finally posting the final blogs, five months later. Better now than never :-)

Palenque 8/18/2010

The drive to Palenque was two hours. We chose to not use a guide this time because there is a museum at the entrance of the grounds and felt the information in there would serve us just as well. The site itself is fairly contained consisting of three main groupings, the tombs and royal palace, the ball court and northern area and the upper, sacred, religious area. The difference here, are the presence of young teenage guides alongside the adult ones. I observed these boys in action and they were quite knowledgeable.

Palenque is still magical, even with the “upgrades” put in place since the last time I was here in the mid 80’s. Back then it seemed “wilder.” One arrived on a bus from Villahermosa after driving through a tiny little town with dirt roads. One walked through the rainforest and then suddenly emerged into an open area tucked up against these mountains from which the ancient buildings seemed to emerge from.

Now the little town, also named Palenque, is a bustling place with well-paved roads. From there the drive is another 10 kilometers to the site. Along this road are a handful of high-end resort hotels and spas as well as a hostel and even a campsite. Upon arrival at a little guardhouse, one pays the requisite parking fee. A little further up is an area for the tour buses to park and the museum, along with two little, site-sanctioned shops. From here one can walk up or drive further up the road to the entrance, which is what we did. In keeping with the incredible entrepreneurial spirit of Mexico, there are guys hanging out who take on the “responsibility” of directing drivers into parking spaces and then expect a tip for their “services.” They’ll clean your windshields for another fee. This was actually something I noticed on our trip to Puerto Progreso. Mario actually did tip the “parking attendant,” although there, parking was a serious issue and a little help in finding a spot was welcome. In Palenque parking was not an issue. We didn’t tip.

Forgot to mention an unsettling thing during our trip. Outside of Tulum, Merida, and Villahermosa there were highway checkpoints manned by soldiers with big machine guns hanging from shoulder straps. I’m assuming that this is a response to the narco-violence that is so prevalent in Mexico these days, particularly in the northern area. The thing is it seems pretty unclear what they are looking for. We never got stopped. It was probably pretty easy to mark us as tourists. But I never saw any car stopped, nor did I witness the soldiers asking drivers for information. Diego