Caves, Waterfalls, Ruins and a Walled City

Las Gustas Caves

Agua Azul Waterfalls

Pelanque

Campeche-Walled City

Pirate Hostel

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

I woke up early and walked back across the city to get our truck where it was parked in the pension.  Halfway there I realized that I did not know the name of the street where we are staying and I don’t have a map with me.  I was a little worried that I would get fouled up driving around and not be able to find my way back, but it turned out alright.  We loaded up our gear with no problems except for some guy peeing on our truck tire.

The drive started east out of San Cristobal de las Casas.  After 9 kilometers we stopped at this cave called Las Grutas (this might just mean “The Caves” I’m not sure).  It was only 30 pesos ($2.50 US) total for us to go there and the cave was enormous!  It seemed almost as big as Mammoth Cave in Kentucky (see blog #1) and it had lots of cool melted candle wax stalactite drip, something that Mammoth lacked.  The best part about it was that we were the only ones there!  In Kentucky we were part of a wise-crackin’ tour group.  Here we had the whole place to ourselves to make echoes and move at our own pace.

After that we drove for a few hours north thru the mountains that were now covered with jungle instead of desert.  Around mid afternoon we got to this jungle river waterfall area called Agua Azul (76 pesos).  This place was really beautiful as I’m sure you’ll be able to see from the pictures.  We swam a little bit but there were only a couple smallish pools that you could go in.  The main attraction was walking up the hillside and taking pictures of the unreal looking turquoise water. 

One funny thing that happened while we were there; we traded one of our bicycles to a gang of little kids in exchange for washing our truck.  They wanted to do if for money at first and I said no.  Then they started asking about the bikes on the roof.  I told them that I’d sell one to them for 100 pesos ($8 US).  Of course none of them had the money but I could tell that they really wanted the bike.  If they had it they would have elevated status in their village as men with wheels.  My once trusty bike is now a junky safety hazard.  Neither the front or the rear brakes work, you can only peddle in 1 of the original 21 gears, and the front tire is flat.  They did an alright job on the truck for not having any soap, but I made them do the passenger side windows again because they were not up to snuff. 

On the road again we encountered a new sales technique.  As we were driving along we saw a group of little kids and an older woman up ahead on the side of the road.  No big deal.  But as we drive closer one of the kids pulls on a rope that is laying across the road and tied to a tree on the other side.  The rope tightens and makes a gate across the road in front of our truck!  The kid holds the rope while the rest of his crew come up to the windows and try to sell us stuff.  We don’t buy anything and it was slightly unnerving because it seemed a little like an ambush. 

Not long after that we reached our resting place for the night; a campground called Mayabell’s right out side of the ancient Mayan ruins of Palenque.   Another excellent dinner tonight; tuna quesadillas with onion, and avocado, and a side of beets. 

~Jon

Thursday, March 15 2012

Well, I’ve been off on my dates for a couple days.  I found out today that it was actually Thurs. March 15 not Thurs. March 16.  My watch did not account for the leap year.  On another note, Mexico does not do daylight savings so we are 2 hours behind, not 1 hour.  I’ve been a little off for a while.  We started our day off right with some cooked breakfast and I tried to take a hot shower as was promised but it never became hot…grrr.  There were also weird guys staying at our campsite (2 to be exact) with their little dogs.  They we a little weird by themselves but what made them very weird was the fact that when they went to shower in the men’s bathroom, they took their dogs. 

After breakfast we decided to walk to the Palenque Ruins because they were supposed to be right behind where we camped.  We walked out to the road and as soon as we got there a bus labeled “Ruinas” pulled up and a family waiting there jumped in.  They said something in Spanish about Palenque and the sign said “Ruinas” so Jon thought they were going to the ruins.  I however, did not think that because the bus was going the opposite direction and there is also a town called Palenque in the opposite direction.  I mentioned this to Jon but he said we were fine since the sign said ruins.  As we passed out of the park area I told Jon we definitely weren’t going the right way so he asked and they said no they weren’t going to the ruins and let us out.  We had to walk back to 2km to our campsite.  However, before we could enter the park that we just accidentally exited the guard with a machine gun wanted us to pay.  No one spoke English and we couldn’t communicate that we had already been in the park.  Jon eventually did tell them that we didn’t have any money (which was a lie) and we would pay on our way out (which was another lie).

When we got back to our campsite we decided to drive to the entrance of the ruins because we were already behind schedule.  Palenque is a Mayan ruin and in my opinion has been the best ruins that we have seen so far.  It was in a lush, humid jungle with lots of greenery and was the first ruins that we could actually explore inside.  Teotihuacan was extraordinary because they had such large pyramids but Palenque is more my kind of ruins because of the vegetation.  We also almost sold my bike in the parking lot to some natives for 200 pesos but when the kid brought his dad over it was a no go because we are missing a tire either by theft or loss going over a tope.

We continued to drive out of the mountains to the Caribbean coast of Mexico. The mountain roads were treacherous.  At one point we came downhill around a sharp turn to find a tope signaling that our half of the road had fallen away 3000 feet off the mountain, and a semi was coming at us from the other direction.  This happened more than once.  I’m glad to be out of the mountain roads. Tonight we are staying in the town of Campeche.   This town is one of the few walled cities left in the world.  It is really beautiful here so we got a room at the Pirate Hostel, walked around, had dinner and some chocolate drinks this evening. 

One sad note is that our refrigerator seems to be broken.  It has electricity but does not cool down so it seems the compressor is not turning on.  This must have happened during one of the 7000 topes that we have gone over unknowingly so we have to find a small machine repairman tomorrow and get that fixed.  Luckily we didn’t have too much in the fridge except for a few vegetables, hongos, moles and some Oaxacan cheese, which we promptly ate.  After we get it fixed we need to find a way to better stabilize the thing so it doesn’t get jostled around so much.  Ugh!