Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Wow. What a bus journey.
Left San Cristobal this morning. Spent yesterday afternoon and evening wandering around looking at all the amber shops and stuff. Sat in the zocalo for about an hour watching all the women and little girls with their arms and shoulders loaded with blankets and bracelets and belts and animalitos, shoving them on every tourist that walked past. Some lad started doing beat boxing, and they all crowded round him in complete amazement. It was really really bizarre seeing all these small girls dressed in indigenous wooly skirts and blouses with really long plaits, stood in front of this really tall skatery guy.
The bus journey went through all the hills between San Cristóbal and Palenque. Loads of cloudy peaks and huge valleys and waterfalls and rivers and everything. Something else. We landed in Palenque at about 6 o´clock, and after buying our tickets to Merida (didn´t want to get nearly stranded like we did in Zipolite), we smiled very nicely at a taxi driver and threatened to get a bus, and ended up getting a cheaper ride to Palenque traveller´s hang out extraodanaire - El Panchan. It´s a forest, well jungle really, with loads of cabañas dotted around. We managed to get one (only one left with a private bathroom 500 pesos for two nights - thats 25 pounds between three of us... ace). Of course, it doesn´t compare to the Camohmila cabaña (nothing ever will I don´t think :( ) but there´s loads of places to eat dotted around randomly, and we´re off to the famous ruins tomorrow early in the morning, as it is Very hot and sweaty here, and then on a tour of the waterfalls all day on Friday. Swimming time!
As the internet is a complete rip off here, I will be saving all my wonderful photos until I hit merida.
hasta then folks
Friday 11th.
It´s official! only two more weeks to go until I will be getting on the plane back home! yay!
Well, yesterday was ace potatoes, managed to load up some of my photies of my travels so far, so check them out.
So, we got up really early after a groovy night the night before, lots of live music and watching all the expert salsa dancers. We ate with the two french guys who we have literally bumped into at every place we have been. So the conversation was in French and I didn´t have a clue what was going on. I can´t cope with switching between french and spanish after I haven´t done french for a year...
We headed off to the ruinas, the best in the country je pense. They were really cool, lots of them have been restored, but they were pretty impressive. In the jungle with monkey noises and waterfalls and everything. We had a look round, trekked up all the stairs (flip, seeing as I haven´t had any stair practise for 5 months, I was actually scared for my life going down them. They´re really steep and uneven. Je le déteste.
We had a good look round at all the bits that weren´t so well restored, more in the jungly parts, really cool waterfalls. We actually saw a monkey in a tree, and had just taken a photo of it, when it started to wee on us. hahahahaha. Didn´t get us though... thank dios.
After that, we had a wander round the museum (air con) and a look at a huge tomb that they found, which I did know the name of but cannot for the life of me remember at the moment.
After ruina time, we headed back to the hostel to book the waterfall tour that we went on today. The french gals, marthe and marion, watned to go horseriding too, and the guy, Luis, asked me why I didn´t want to go.. I ummed and aahd, and eventually he said, oh go on, so you enjoy yourself. I told him, yeah but its 200 pesos, and he knocked it down straight away to 150 for me. After insisting to m and m that he couldn´t lower the price. They were not amused. I was. The poor guy got the full on wrath of Marthe. hehe.
So we horse rode along a few tracks (no, my legs don´t hurt too much today, but my arse does ever so slightly), and as my horse was the most flojo horse in the history of equinitarianism or whatever, I was always at the back, so ended up nattering away to Luis for an hour or so. Not that I understood half of what he said, as he spoke really unclearly and I couldn´t see his face to try and lip read a bit. Ni modo.
Today, we went on the grand waterfall tour of chiapas. Wow. The first one, Mohan´ka or something like that, was really tall and sprayey, the next, was mainly a lake with a really dodgy bridge across and lots of small children selling bananas and piña. I felt really bad for them shoving their little plastic bowls of fruit at us, compre platano amiga, 10 pesos, 5 pesos, si tienes dinero. It´s horrible.
Then we went to agua azul, wow. That was amazing. Waterfall after waterfall, and really turquoise blue water, dead clear. It was something else. We went swimming here (in the hour when it didn´t rain), and although the water was slighlty chilly at first, it was dead nice with all the humidity. It was a bit of a mish getting out into the centre to sit on the rocks where the water tips over, but getting back I was like, that australian olympic dude who wins all those swimming medals. ish.
And now, after a crazy mini van ride through the windyest rollercoasterstylee roads you have ever seen, we´re esperando the bus for our next adventura to Mérida! woo!
- comments