Palenque, Yaxchilan and Bonampack

We have already been two weeks in Mexico but we still haven't seen anybody wearing a typical mexican hat. However we have seen lots with cowboy hats. Weird!

After our visit to San Cristobal we had a 4.5 h bus ride to Palenque. We went from 2200 meters to sea level and we had to go through a very windy road, full of bumps and full of kids who were stopping the bus with a rope across the road to sell fruit.

In Palenque we had to wear short pants for the first time, as the weather here is very hot, humid and its full of mosquitoes. The town doesn't have anything special, but the ruins are spectacular. We also went to Misol-Ha and Agua azul waterfalls but we didn´t swim because it was too crowded.

Fresh mango lollipop

Palenque was our start point to our trip to Tikal. On the way there we visited two more Mayan sites: Yaxchilan and Bonampak. Both are very special. Yaxchilan because it is in the middle of the jungle, you need to take a 50 min boat ride through the river and also there are buildings that you can enter and it is completely dark. We saw bats in there! Bonampak, is the Mayan site with the best preserved paintings.

Victor and bats!

Bonampak is inside the Lacandon indigenous reserve and it is all managed by them. We spent the night at one of the cabins in Lacanja and we were able to see how these people live. Men dressed with a with a white robe and women with a flowered one. It was surprising that there are some people that speak spanish with a very hard Mayan accent as the latter is their native language. We also learned two ways of saying hello in Mayan: Bakaurik and Dieneix.

And next stop: Tikal, Guatemala