The closer we got to Palenque, the more roadside vendors we saw. Every time there was a tope in a small town forcing the truck to almost come to a stop, we were approached by locals trying to sell oranges, nuts, dried bananas, coconut water, etc. At one point several small children jumped onto our running boards trying to sell us food items, and when we said “No, gracious”, they asked for pesos instead. Derek tried his tactic of chatting them up, which we have found often distracts them from trying to get something from us, but they were pretty insistent that we should give them some money. All the while they hung from windows on the running boards in the middle of the highway. We, generally, don’t give kids money. Others ,wiser than us, have told us that it promotes a begging society and discourages them from going to school. So, eventually, Derek had to start inching the truck ahead to get the kids to let go of our truck…it felt yucky, neither of us liked having to do that, but it was the only way we could figure out how to get them off of our running boards.

At another point, debris had been placed on one side of the road forcing us to go into the other lane, where young men were holding a rope across the road. They were dropping the rope for local cars and letting them driving through, but not for us. Derek stopped, and they told us we needed to pay them 50 pesos. When Derek asked why, they said for road work, but the debris in the other lane consisted primarily of palms leaves and other vegetation that could easily be swept away and there was no damage to the road, so Derek said, in Spanish, “I don’t understand, there’s no road work happening here” and drove away. The young men seemed a little sheepish asking for the money….they must be pretty new at it.

Finally, we arrived in Palenque, did some grocery shopping and found our campsite for the night. It had been raining for quite a while, and continued to rain off and on all day and night. We decided the next morning that instead of visiting the ruins that we would take the day off and get some chores done. The office at the campground had laundry services, so we dropped off a large bag of dirty clothes. Derek experimented with a new method for filling our airbags, we read, we did some cleaning, used the campgrounds wifi at the restaurant, etc.

The next morning, it was still raining. We decided to head into the town of Palenque and get an oil change and have the tires rotated and wait until the next morning to go to the ruins. Derek had researched and found what seemed like a good tire shop, Tecnicentro del Sur, and we were well pleased with the work that they did. The owner told us that it was going to keep raining for the next few days, so after they finished up, we decided to visit the ruins that afternoon, rain or not.

We ended up with a decent weather window and had only a trace of rain while we were at the archeological site. Again, we climbed several structures, and were able to walk through some tunnels in other structures.

The grand palace. You could climb this one and there were tunnels leading through and beneath the structure.

The tallest pyramid at Palenque. You are supposed to be able to see Tikal from the top, a set of ruins in the neighbouring country of Guatemala.

They have only partially excavated this pyramid. Before being excavated, many ruins just looked like treed hills in the jungle. Now I see unearthed ruins everywhere, any time there is a pointy hill, I think I may be looking at a buried ruin and recent research projects with ultra sensitive LIDAR surveying has suggested I may not be too far off.

Bas relief carving of king partaking of smoke. Now that’s a serious Doob!

This a a set of falls in a lower area of Palenque where they have only partially excavated the ruins.

Beautiful!

The clouds reaching down to the jungle surrounding Palenque.

The symmetry and exactness of the stonework, and the fact that it has lasted through so many earthquakes and weather and time…..it is amazing.

We spent the night in a different campground, where it rained and rained and water ran deep down the pathways. In the morning we had a great breakfast in the adjoining restaurant before our 5 hour drive to Campeche.