Welcome to the Jungle - Palenque

Our next port of call, Palenque, is a gruelling 15 hours bus journey from Oaxaca and with there only being 1 service per day, at 1700 hours, this was our chariot of both choice and necessity. With Kerry still feeling a little dicky, though the Egyptian Antanal she had taken was beginning to weave its magic, we took a taxi to the bus station and waited to board what we hoped would be a super luxurious coach. We speculated on how many gringos we might count among our fellow passengers, after all, both Oaxaca and Palenque are very much on the tourist trail so with only one bus per day I figured we might expect half the bus to be backpackers and therefore we'd have an opportunity to swap some travellers tales. We were surprised therefore that we were 2 of only 4 non-Mexicans aboard and by coincidence we were sat in 3 consecutive rows of seats towards the rear. In front of us was a Chinese-American with around 50 festering mozzie bites around his ankles and behind was a bearded Italian who had body odour powerful enough to tranquillise a rhinoceros at 50 paces. As he walked up the aisle with both hands feeling along the luggage rack for stability people were visibly recoiling and if only there were a toilet seat handy to put round peoples necks we could have staged an impromptu gurning championship. Paradoxically, I felt an overwhelming surge of excitement as we drove through the outskirts of Oaxaca and began to climb up twisting roads into a mountain range. The feeling of freedom  as we set out on each new leg of this journey is exactly what I was looking for in this trip. It's hard to explain but I think it might be because it's a great unknown; you don't know what will happen, who you'll meet, what you'll see or eat or where you'll stay. I know for some that's quite intimidating and just the opposite of what they like but for Kerry and me it gives us such a thrill. This delirium was tempered somewhat by our bus not quite being the standard that we may have expected on such a mammoth journey. The seats did recline and were reasonably comfortable but it was quite cramped and there was little legroom and no footrest, the latter being quite important as you seek to find comfort at 3am. In addition our seats were just outside the toilet which on the one hand was convenient for Kerry and her lingering propensity to squit through the eye of a needle but a little too close for comfort from an aromatic perspective. Nevertheless, we settled down and enjoyed the journey as best we could, Kerry engrossing herself in the second part of the Fifty Shades trilogy and me playing my 14 millionth game of scrabble since we left Blighty. Praise the lord for iPhones, all the available apps and particularly scrabble. I don't know what I'd do without it. There are no autopistas (motorways) in this part of Mexico, nor indeed a truly direct route between our origin and destination so our route was somewhat meandering. We headed towards all cardinal points at one stage or another, despite our goal being due west, and also suffered a couple of "all lights on and everybody off" type stops in the small hours, a particular irritation when you've finally grown accustomed to the armrest digging into your ribs and nodded off. At an undetermined hour we traversed a section of road that was so potholed and littered with speed bumps that we were jiggled to the bounds of sanity but we then slept through until 0745, just 15 minutes before our arrival at Palenque. A packet of biscuits aside, we hadn't eaten since the previous lunchtime so our first priority was to eat breakfast. We found an eatery a few doors down and sat and watched the locals go about their business as we waited for scrambled eggs on toast. Most people here are engaged in the tourism business one way or another, be it driving vans to the Mayan ruins, working in restaurants, selling crafts, taxi driving or working in hotels. Whereas in the UK a prospective patron consciously seeks what it is he wants to spend his filthy lucre on, here you are made aware of all opportunities open to you by business owners and their representatives. This means that a 20 yard walk down the street will see you offered many things, none of which you probably want and it can get very wearisome when straight off an overnight bus. With one of us having eaten heartily and the other having toyed with half a dozen corn flakes we set out to find a room and an hotel with pool so that we could laze the whole day away doing nothing but reading and swimming. The Best Western had an offer on for about £40 per night and with its 3 pools and beautifully landscaped gardens to lounge in it ticked all of our boxes. Since arriving in Mexico the standard of our accommodations has risen dramatically. Whereas we were constantly scrabbling around the bottom end of the market in the USA in an attempt to stay on budget, here we're able to take a room in the best hotel in town. It somehow seems a bit fraudulent; surely a gap year is spent in youth hostels and the cheap hotels and pensions, not Best Westerns? Well no, as it turns out it doesn't have to be and it's a very pleasant realisation. We had a lovely relaxing day on Saturday sitting in that garden. It is swelteringly hot in this part of Mexico at this time of year with humidity off the scale. Even the Mexicans are visibly perspiring so it was lovely to lie in the shade and take a dip every half hour or so to cool off. Whilst the flora in the garden created a pleasant and relaxing atmosphere the fauna did its bit to keep us entertained too. We saw a few lizards shimmying up trees before two of them got braver and approached us to investigate. There was a great big green one, probably 2 and a half feet in length including its tail, which took an extreme interest in my flip flops. It amused us to watch it nibble them and even when I moved them onto a sun lounger it found them and continued its oral fixation with them. It was a bit unnerving when it got under my lounger and then tried to climb up to where I was so I ended up shooing it away. Then there were the mozzies that unbeknownst to Kerry had nibbled her back leaving 5 angry looking welts, later to itch like hell like they always do. We watched "Forrest Gump" that evening in our room, a rare chance to see an English language film and slept like logs afterwards to make up for the night on the bus. This saw us refreshed and ready to tackle the reason for being here in the first place, the spectacular jungle ruins of the old Mayan city nearby. We hailed a minibus and paid our 50p fare for the 6 mile journey and then feasted our senses on one of the most amazing of all the archaeological sites in Mexico. Palenque (not its real name, this just means 'Palisades' in Spanish) was first populated around 100BC and by 600 ish was one of the most important cities of the Maya. Through the 600s the city was ruled by Pakal, considered a living deity due to his royal lineage and subsequent passage into old age. He lived to be 80 when your average Mayan was lucky to get beyond 40. When he did eventually succumb to old age he was buried deep inside a towering ziggurat in a massive stone sarcophagus which was elaborately carved, along with some priceless items including a jade death mask. His tomb was discovered in 1952 by a Mexican archaeologist who himself is now buried at the foot of the great pyramid. The death mask was stolen in the 1980s and if all that isn't Indiana Jones enough for you, an eccentric Count lived atop one of the other pyramids in the 1850s, 20 years after its discovery by self-financing New York adventurer John Stephens in 1837. It is a lost city in every sense, albeit very much found now, and you can't fail to gape in awe at the magnificence of the buildings and the setting. To complete the exotic feel we were treated to the hideous screech of howler monkeys in the distance whilst we sat atop one of the pyramids. As it happened we had found ourselves completely alone with no other people in sight when this happened to add to the sense of excitement and mystery. If I thought I'd been hot at Puerto Escondido or in Palenque town then that was nothing compared to how we felt at the ruins. Not only was my shirt sodden but my trousers got saturated too. Unfortunately I'd elected to wear a green pair of trousers so it was painfully obvious that first my nether regions and then my thighs and even my shins were perspiring at an alarming rate. It's a horrible feeling but I did at least console myself that I didn't appear to be the only one suffering, there were plenty of other sweaty arse cracks in evidence and even Kerry, or "She who will only glow" to give her her Mayan moniker, was moister than your average Devonian weekend. On the way back to town the heavens opened in a spectacular demonstration of tropical weather. The poor windscreen wipers on our battered Toyota van couldn't contend with the volume of water and when we leapt out to get back to the hotel we landed in an inch deep river and were soaked to the skin though we were only out in it for seconds. All that remained for us to do next was to plot our way out of here. We very nearly took a 6am departure to the Guatemalan border for a connecting boat up the Usumacinta river to Flores in El Peten in Guatemala. Something though told us not to and to opt for the 0800 bus to Merida in the north west corner of the Yucatan peninsula instead. This we did, though it would prove to be a fateful journey for those of us with continued aspirations to see throughout this trip.