I had only heard about Palenque after I started my trip, on day four to be precise. This would be the beginning of many moments travelers telling me that I absolutely must go to Palenque. Palenque is located in the Mexican state of Chiapas. It is a jungle city nestled in the mountains. It is most famous for its archaeological zone that is considered one of the most astounding sites to have been discovered. This place was hyped like crazy. While there are many options for hotel lodging some of my friends from hostels recommended that I stay in a hostel in the jungle so that I could experience the 5 o'clock in the morning sound of the howler monkeys. I decided against this and took this opportunity to book a very inexpensive hotel. This would be the first hotel of my travel journey. Given the complexity of arriving in Palenque by way Villahermosa airport, I didn't have that much time to see everything that I wanted to see. I would take the shuttle van directly to Palenque, 2 hours, from the airport.
I booked the hotels closest to the bus station specifically because I read on Trip Advisor that the people who sell the tours to go to all the various sites hang out right off of the bus station. The idea was that I would arrive and immediately book the tours I wanted and hopefully find a half-day tour and get on the damn bus. I proud to say that actually made that happen. I arrived at the bus station at 11:30am I saw that there was a tour leaving at noon to go to the waterfalls. I ran to the hotel, checked my luggage, ran back to the bus station and got on that damn bus just like I planned. The tour called for visiting two sets of waterfalls: Mixul-Ha and Agua Azul. After an hour drive, we would spend 40 minutes at the first waterfall the drive another hour to go to the second waterfall where we would spend three hours.
Mixul-Ha has a lakeside restaurant, a walk behind the waterfall and a walk into the caves. If you know me well then you know with that 90° weather, I jumped right into that water. They gave us a little flashlight for the cave tour it lasted a whole five minutes and it was pretty nifty. When we gathered at the van to go to the second waterfall site the driver told us that the highway to the next waterfall is being blocked by protesters and we have to go to an alternative site. People seemed to be upset and there was a lot of confusion around this. The French couple in my van did not understand and I translated the message from Spanish to French for them. They were amazed that a New Yorker could speak French. Basically we were in the middle of the jungle and we're going to another beautiful waterfall site instead of the intended beautiful waterfall site. It can't possibly be a bad thing.
We start driving down the hill and our driver notices something wrong with the rear wheel. He pulled over and gets out of the car and started kicking the wheel and looking at it. He gets back in the car, we saw driving little bit more but then he started getting very concerned and he pulled over again. One of the dudes in the van gets out takes a look at it with him and they both started shaking their heads in a very negative way. The wheel is messed up and the van is broken and we are stuck downhill on the road. We are asked to get out of the van. (It's at this point that I leave my gray baseball hat in the van inadvertently. I wouldn't realize this until the next day. Keep reading!) A few minutes later federal police officers pull up to the van and they start discussing the situation with our driver. Before you know it the federal police were squeezing us in their cars and taking us to a local shack down at the bottom of the hill. We were told that another van would come and pick us up and one did arrive! All in all we maybe lost about an hour and we spent two hours at the second waterfall instead of three.
The second falls, the alternate plan, are called Roberto Barrios. When you arrive at the site you see a parking lot and a small set of waterfalls that would be completely impressive in any part of the eastern United States on their own. I did not realize was that this small intrusion was basically not even part of this magical wonder of nature. We proceeded downhill alongside the small falls. We would see five levels of cascading water falling onto shiny rocks of a light brown color. These rocks were in natural step formation and allowed for easy climbing up or down, to my surprise. You would think that the slippery look of these rocks would preclude one from climbing them. However, there were something special about these rocks allowed human feet to suction onto them. You could walk alongside the edge of the falls without any concern that you would slip and fall, and I can attest to this because I walked along the edge of these falls and came upon of one of the most beautiful panoramic views of Planet Earth. It was on the top of the fourth level of Cascades that I caught the perfect glimpse of the sun setting, four levels of Cascades and pools below me, jungle trees to my left and right, and the jungle mountains on the horizon. I would sit at the edge of these Cascades and stare. A few of the people on my trip were doing this thing where they would jump from the rocks into the pools. They convinced me to do it once. That was enough. I was more pleased with sitting at the edge and staring into the distance. "This is Palenque”, I thought. “This is why people say I should come here.”
Sun set at Cascadas Roberto Barrios.
The next day my plan was to see the archaeological zone in the morning and try the Agua Azul falls in the afternoon that I had missed a day before (because of the highway being blocked by protesters). I wanted to not only see the archaeological ruins but I wanted to do the special Palenque jungle tour that I had read about on Trip Advisor. I had done a significant amount of research on this from both the Internet and travelers who had been to Palenque before. I was getting conflicting reports about the existence of a hiking path. As a matter of fact I even met people who told me that there is no jungle hike at Palenque and the only thing to do is to see the pyramids. Thankfully, I arrived at the site early talk to a local guide and discovered that indeed there is a jungle hike that you can do, and you need a guide. I had read that you can find a local boy at a low price to take you around but for some reason my gut was telling me that maybe it would be better to have a professional take me around the jungle, considering it is a jungle and I had recently heard about the jaguars that existed in Chiapas.
It would have been nice to have maybe shared the hike with someone who I had met at a hostel, but I was in a hotel and I had not met anyone on my tour the previous day that I connected with (all couples who already “did the pyramids”). It also would have helped me save some money on this hike (it would end up being my single most costly expenditure in my Mexico trip) but I did it with the guide and I had an individualized tour. I also realized that I did not have my hat and that the sun was scorching. I figured I left my hat at the Roberto Barrios waterfalls and so much for that. I bought a new hat.
He showed me gigantic trees, roots that looked like the feet of giants, and most importantly remnants of the ancient city of Palenque that have yet to be uncovered and I will probably never be uncovered. For you see, 80% of the Palenque site remains undiscovered. Satellite imagery has showed us this. I guess I felt a little bit like Indiana Jones. The guy told me about the magic mushrooms that you can find in this jungle. He also shared with me that in the 1970s because the site was so prone to looting, his father was one of the security guards and he was actually born in the archaeological site. Above all the tour was given to me entirely in Spanish. This would give me the confidence boost that I needed after my experiences in Celestun and Progresso to know that I was really speaking and understanding Spanish now. This was not a fluke or a mishap. I was now fully engaged in the Spanish-language conversation and education in Mexico. I was proud and I will never forget this.
The Palenque archaeological ruins are a result of engineering marvel and the passion of archaeologists. What you see is the grandeur of a lost civilization. The site has what seems like an almost completely intact palace minus the roof. Many of the ruins are partially covered by jungle trees or moss, giving the pyramids a more colorful affect. The site is massive, which speaks to its previous status as a capital city. In some ways, it's very sad to see such beauty lost to the ages. In other ways, similar to the site at Uxmal, you feel a certain sense of pride and glory, for the architectural detail built into the structures is still appealing to the eye after almost 1,000 years. Also like Uxmal, the Palenque site is much more than pyramids. It is temples and remnants of homes and palaces and burial sites/tombs. At some point, you have to decide to leave and move on to the next thing because you feel this odd immersion in the place even though there is really nothing to do there but to look and climb. You can also watch how other people react or don’t react to the very same beauty. Palenque was hyped appropriately.
In order to get to Agua Azul from the archaeological zone without having to go back to El Centro, I would have another mini-adventure and join another waterfall tour from the Palenque site, paying a random guy selling sandwiches for a ticket. He told me he also sells tours. So, this guy sells tortas and tours. I love Mexico. Anyway, I get on the van and ask if we can see Agua Azul because yesterday it was blocked. They say affirmatively that it is not blocked. It’s the same itinerary as the day before. We start with Mixul-Ha for 40 minutes and then we continue on. This time at Mixul-Ha, I went to the restaurant to have lunch. Remarkably, after 40 minutes, when we got to the van, the drivers told us the same thing as they did the day before. The highway was blocked and we couldn’t see Agua Azul. We would be going to Roberto Barrios again. Really there are much worse places one could spend an afternoon. There was really no choice here. We are in the middle of the jungle. I got in the van. This time it didn’t break. We drove through the crazy jungle hills again. Thank you, Drammamine, for making this possible. This time at Roberto Barrios, I knew exactly where my special spot was and I wouldn’t waste any time exploring around or trying to conquer my fears of jumping off of rocks. I would meditate and enjoy the beauty.
I met an Italian guy living in Manhattan on the rocks. He was a little timid about going to the edge. He hadn’t brought a bathing suit. He had all of his backpacking gear with him. He had arrived from Cancun earlier that morning after a 14 hour bus ride. I told him to roll up the cuffs of his jeans and come with me to see the view. He thanked me. We talked and learned about each other. His name was Fernando. He also spoke French. It was nice not being alone in such a beautiful place. I think he felt the same way too.
Before getting back in the van at the end of the day, I went over to the snack shop and asked them if they had happened to see a gray cap left at the site. They said yes! They told me that el gordo had it. “The fat guy”. I didn’t know who the fat guy was. They told me it was in the office of the tour company. When we got back to El Centro, I went to the tour office and they told me someone would come drop off my hat in 45 minutes.
I dined together with Fernando at the German restaurant in El Centro that evening. I got up in the middle of the dinner to run quickly to the tour company office to retrieve my hat (Palenque’s El Centro is small). Of course we were joking that there was no way on Earth that they actually had it. And guess what? They did. They actually took the time and effort to retrieve my hat. They told me I actually left it in the van… but then I don’t fully understand how the people who worked at the Roberto Barrios site knew that my hat had been found. The tour operators are a close community. There is no lost-and-found system. They use verbal communication to get shit done, just like how the Federal Police drove us to the base of the mountain the day before. They were just being nice people. It’s that simple. (When I was 14 years old and I got sick on the Staten Island train and had to get off, I had no change for a phone call to have someone pick me up. There was a local Citibank, so I went inside and explained that I was ill and needed to make an emergency phone call. The guy said no. I explained again and he said no. That’s an example of people from my hometown being not nice.)
I had to catch the bus to Villahermosa so I could fly to Tuxtla the next day to get to the ultra-hyped San Cristobal. Dinner was quick. I said goodbye to my new friend and got on the bus, with my gray baseball hat.