Next Stop Mexico
Trip Start
Jul 19, 2005
1
31
45
Trip End
Ongoing
Palenque, Mexico
Wednesday, January 4, 2006
After the hike, the next leg of our trip was up to Mexico. We consider this part of the trip successful, simply for the fact that Eric did not get "arrested" (or harassed as he likes to call it) by Mexican cops this time. He's really come a long way since his college days.
We stopped off in San Cristobal de las Casas for a day or two, but decided to leave after we experienced the 40 degree weather up in this mountain town. This may not seem too cold to all you Hoosiers surviving the winter up there, but having been relaxing in the tropical sun down here, it was about as cold as we could take.
We jumped on another bus and headed off to Palenque, which is in the jungle with temperatures much more to our liking. There are some incredible Mayan ruins and series of waterfalls near the town, and we spent a day looking around them all. The Palenque ruins were huge, and you are able to walk up any of the temples. These are some of the only ruins where you can actually go inside and walk around the tunnels in the ruins as well. We had fun humming the Indiana Jones theme song, and looking for secret passages.
After the ruins, we went to a waterfall that was about 50 meters high, and you could go behind it. Some crazies actually got in the water to swim although the falling water would probably knock you out if you got too close. The next series of waterfalls we visited were a lot like the tropical lagoons at Semuc Champey, just on a much bigger scale, and with a lot more tourists. They were beautiful but too chilly to get in.
That night we took an overnight bus to Chetemul, which is the closes town to the Belizean border. We got there the morning of Christmas Eve, and took another bus down to Belize City to wait for Anne and Chris to get there the next day.
Belize City is a crazy port town, and reminded me of the not-so-nice parts of New Orleans. We made friends with a crazy lady who kept screaming something about having the white-man's baby, and chatted up practically every person on the street. The Belizeans are the absolute friendliest people I've ever met. Even the homeless men walking around the street would start talking to us (rarely asking us for anything) and only wanted to say, "Merry Christmas" or recite facts about American states or presidents. Random, but very friendly.
