The ruins open at 8 am, so we rolled out of bed at 7 to eat a bit, drenched ourselves in DEET, and checked out of Margarita end Ed's. Walking back to the main road, we waited for a colectivo to pass. Meanwhile, the people at the gate had us pay 20 pesos for some silly bracelet to support government preservation of parks. We had the same spiel at the Sumidero canyon. The 48 peso ticket for entry to Palenque is in addition to the bracelet fee.
Waving off multilingual guides near the entrance, we first came to the Temple of Inscriptions and climbed around the Palace, admiring the famous tower. Next we climbed some of the tamples in the central group (Temple of the Cross, etc.). Passing by many craft vendors, I pretended to play pelota in the ancient ball court and climbed some more structures in the northeast. We continued deeper into the jungle towards the museum, passing a few partially excavated ruins, including some living quarters. while crossing a bridge, someone (we won't mention any names...) accidentally tossed my cell phone/camera into
the river. We were able to run down and recover the device from the rocks, but it was not functioning normally. Fortunately, the memory card was still dry.
Briefly visiting the rather decent muesum complex, we hailed a colectivo around 10:30 back to the bus station to purchase tickets back to San Cristobal. We found two seats on the 11:40 bus, so we ate lunch at a cheap but nice place several doors down. The bus was 20 minutes late as usual, but the ride was significantly more pleasant than yesterday's (namely because it was two hours shorter). We stopped in Ocosingo as before.
Back in S.C., we bought two pillowcases, two shirts, and a mayan calendar print in the "sweets and handicrafts" market on Insurgentes, a few blocks north of the bus stations. Following this, we filled our starving bellies at the chinese place across the street and were surprised to have found decent (cheap) Chinese food, in that it actually tasted like cheap American-Chinese food. We were also happy to have a special dinner guest - the owner had a huge Rabbit that was hopping around the place.
Frank
