Lucie & Rhys´s Honeymoon Adventure: Week 49 - Valladolid, Campeche, Palenque, San Cristobal de las Casas (Mexico)

Another early start and we were in a combi van by 7:15am for the 45 minute drive out to Chichen Itza. We arrived just after opening time and way before the tour groups were due to turn up. Being the most visited of all the Mayan sites it’s a bit stricter than some of the other places, it’s very well kept and you can’t climb on the ruins and has undergone a lot of restoration. Although the tallest pyramid, El Castillo is actually quite small at 30m, the carvings and decoration in other areas were far more impressive than any we saw at Tikal, with a fusion of highland central Mexican and Puuc architectural styles. The Toltecs who lived there were obsessive about human sacrifice and glorification of military escapades and there are lots of skull carvings and sacrificial tables. The city was abandoned in the 14th century, no one really knows why. We had a great morning and whizzed around the site with my Kindle acting as our guide in little over 2 hours, managing to get out before the sun got too hot and before the hordes of tour buses arrived from the coast.

Back in Valladolid we retired to our air conditioned room for lunch before heading out again for a collectivo to the nearby cenotes, Dzitnup and Samula. They were busier than the cenotes in Coba and had some funky lighting effects that ruined the ambiance a bit but were still impressive. Huge big underground caverns lit by beams of sunlight streaming through holes in the cave roofs. We had a quick swim in Dzitnup, probably the prettiest of the two with lots of roots hanging down into the pool, before heading to Samula. I stopped to take a photo as we entered the cave and managed to fumble the lens cap and drop it 10 metres into the pool below. We ended up renting goggles to recover it, thank god the water was so clear. After enjoying the cool water and Rhys enjoying his first fish pedicure, we caught a taxi back into town. Rhys chilled in the room and I headed out to visit one last cenote, Zaci, in town. A big, open cavern with green water. That night we ate in the food court by the plaza again.

Another early start and we were at the bus station for a bus to Merida where we then caught another bus on to Campeche. I left Rhys in the plaza with the bags and headed off to find accommodation. We checked in to a little place around 3pm, dropped off our bags and headed back out to spend a couple of hours exploring the town. It was so pretty, a little chocolate box colonial seaside town with pastel coloured buildings and old school lanterns and lampposts hemmed in by the remains of the city walls to the north and south. When we were there there was an exhibition of sculpture by Juan Soriano, huge bronze pigeons and pelicans along one street and there are plenty more permanent sculptures all around town. We popped in to an archaeological museum and another little museum for access to walk along the top of the wall and wandered down to the sea just to be able to say we’d seen the Gulf of Mexico. After some bargain wardrobe refreshing, we stopped back at the hostel for a rest before heading back out to see the town at dusk and to grab a bite to eat. On the way back to the hotel the rain started and we ended up running down the street and getting soaked through.

Our bus the next morning wasn’t until 11am so we had a lay in, packed up and jumped in a taxi out to the bus terminal for a 5 hour trip to Palenque. We arrived in another torrential downpour and although the hotel wasn’t far away jumped in a cab to stay dry. After the rain stopped we headed out and ate at a little European style coffee shop.

More ruins so another early start to miss the tour groups. The Palenque ruins lie 7km out of town and we were at the gates waiting for it to open at 8am. The site more closely resembled Tikal than the sites we’d visited in the Yucatan peninsula with clusters of buildings set in the highland jungle drapped in mist with a river and waterfalls meandering through the site. The city flourished during the classic period and most of the buildings you can see date from the 7th century. Unlike Chichen Itza we were allowed to climb on most of the ruins and could even go inside one of the temples to peer into the sarcophagous. The two main buildings were the Palacio, a huge complex of rooms including a watchtower and the Templo de las Inscripciones, the highest temple in the park at 26m. The most striking thing about the site that we haven’t seen elsewhere were the intricate bas-relief stone carvings and glyphs scattered around the buildings, I realise they’ve been heavily restored but the detail really gave you an idea of how magnificent the site would have been in it’s heyday.

After a couple of hours we were pretty much done with the ruins and after a quick whip around the museum we caught a combi back into town to the hotel to collect our bags and check out. Rather than waiting 2 hours for the bus we managed to find a combi that would take us the 2.5 hours to Ocosingo from where we changed to another combi for another 2.5 hours to get to San Cristobal. We’d booked a cheap hostel online and dropped our bags, put in our laundry and had a quick scout of the town. That night we headed out to the main pedestrianised street for pizza in the pouring rain.

San Cristobal is at an altitude of 2100m, not enough so you get out of breath but enough that it gets pretty chilly at night and it rains. The town is located in a little bowl, surrounded by mountains pocketed with little indigenous villages. It’s like being back in Guatemala (we’re actually closer to Antigua here than to Mexico City) and the streets are full of local people in their beautifully embroidered huipiles/dresses although now the colours are predominantly purples and pinks and the patterns are very floral.

The first full day in San Cristobal I was up at 7am leaving Rhys at the hostel to watch football, to find a combi to go to San Juan Chamula. The village is a Tzotzil Maya community and on Sunday there is a big market in the plaza and all the locals come down from their villages to trade. Their dress is spectacular, not only do the women wear the embroidered huipiles but they pair them with huge shaggy black woolen skirts and the men wear tunics but in a shaggy white wool belted at the waist. Although walking around the market was a great experience with all the colours and smells, it was the church that was the highlight. The building itself inside isn’t that exceptional but the floor is covered in pine needles and combined with the incense the smell is something else. Then there are idols lining the walls and in front of each a little table covered in candles. Everyone kneels on the floor and people bring in more candles to stick to the floor, literally hundreds at a time. There was chanting and people praying aloud and spraying water on the candles to make them fizz, it was quite something. After buying some delicious lychees and grapes I headed back into town to the hostel to find Rhys and join him to watch the second half of the Spurs v Arsenal game.

That afternoon, despite the rain, we headed into town to check out the Templo de Santo Domingo, a beautiful church with an amazing stucco filigree facade and artisanal market next door, and to wander around the municipal market where we stopped for super cheap lunch. Rhys headed back to the hostel and I spent a couple more hours searching the town for cheap clothes shops to renew my wardrobe. I think between us we’ve spent about £50 and managed to buy 4 pairs of shorts, a dress, 7 t-shirts, a belt, 2 underwear sets and a bandanna, BARGAIN! That night we sat in the courtyard at our hostel enjoying a bottle of wine before heading out for gourmet burger.

We woke the next day and the sun was shining. We spent a couple of hours catching up on admin at the hostel while eating our pancake breakfast before heading into town to whizz around the sites before the rain came in again. We headed first to the Inglesia de Guadalupe, a church on a hill at one side of the town before continuing to a gate at the southern end of town and then another church on a hill in the west of town, Inglesia de San Cristobel. Next we walked back up to Templo de Santo Domingo to see it without the rain before wandering south along the pedestrianised central street to another market. After buying pillowcases, Rhys headed back to the hostel to chill and I stayed out intending to visit a museum or two only to find they were all closed on Mondays. I joined Rhys back at the hostel for a glass of wine in the courtyard before we headed out for dinner.

I don’t think you really need so long in San Cristobal unless you’re planning on getting out to see the surrounding countryside but we’ve been pretty busy of late and it has been a real treat just to wake up in the same bed 3 nights running. We had a night bus booked for Tuesday night so had one final day to spend in town. We woke late and spent the day chilling in the hostel courtyard playing with the dogs popping out for lunch in the market. I tried to go to a couple of museums again but didn’t realise they all take like a 4 hour siesta in the middle of the day and gave up waiting around. Instead I wandered through the markets yet again and headed back to the hostel. It was Tim’s birthday, a guy who had been at the hostel for a while and he’d bought beers and wine and chicken to BBQ for everyone. After a couple of drinks we decided that it would be a good night to stick around rather than getting the night bus. The receptionist called the bus company who said if we got to the terminal in 10 minutes they’d transfer the tickets, bearing in mind we only had 30 minutes until the bus was due to leave. We jumped in a cab, told the driver the story so he drove like a loony and got us there in time. Ticket changed we headed back to join the party at our hostel and ended up having a pretty late night.