Life is Good!
As of Friday I started my travels for a fort night. I spend one last day in Mahahual eating and drinking at my favorite places and caught the 6:30pm bus to Chetumal. I was originally going to get the midnight bus to Palenque but all busses were sold out so I had to get the next bus which left at 10:00pm the next day. Mike, Sarah, and I stayed at a place near the market and town square and had a day of walking around the markets, and just chilling out. We went to the mall .... that was a serious shock. even though it has only been about 10 weeks since I had been in a mall it was a serious change of scenery. I once again realized how much I really dislike malls, although it was really funny to see kids in huge blow up balls that were floating on a kiddy pool of water. Mom wants to wander around the mall without having to look after her kid? ah, just drop them off in the plastic ball, its a sure way they can´t hurt themselves. We wanted to see a movie but there weren´t a whole lot out ... so we saw the new Harry Potter (Sarah´s request) ... yeah it was alright. We met up with Carlita and ate some yummy street food tacos and tamales, its sooo cheap!!! There was not a whole lot to do in Chet, its more of a town to buy stuff and not so much for the tourist. There was christmas music playing constantly and yet I still have not heard Feliz Navidad being played .... hmph. We ended up waiting about an hour and 1/2 for our bus but it turned out better that way. We arrived in Palenque at sunrise and it was absolutely beautiful to see the sun rise and mist clear from the hills in the not so far distance. We cuaght a cab to El Panchan where we stayed at this really cool hostel with lots of backpackers and some crazy locals. Once reception finally opened after about 5 coffees we put our stuff in a room and headed off to the ruins. They were sooo magnificent. So large and in such amazing condition! I almost peed my pants with excitement. I will post pictures at a later time, promise. The whole time we were there we kept hearing howler monkeys all over the place but couldn´t see them so we decided to head out into the jungle to find ourselves some monkeys. It wasn't too long before we heard the russeling in the trees and soon found ourselves with two monkeys strait above our heads. They were so cute and were very curisous as to what we were as well. We hung out with them for probably about a half hour while they swang from tree limbs and hung upside down starring at us. I think Mike´s favorite part of the monkey adventure is when one of them started to pee on me. Luckily i heard the trickle first before I felt the drip and I got out of the way just in time and it only got a little splash on my leg. We had a good laugh at that one and Mike´s saying of the day was ¨"you got peed on by a monkey!!". We walked back to where we were staying, a lovely half hour walk with beautiful trees and a white horse on the way. We got back to our cabana and had a shower then set off for town. it was the holiday for the saint of guatelupe which is like the saint of mexico and so the town was having a huge party. There were fireworks and some performers and the whole town was very lively. Once we got back to our hotsel the party didn´t stop. I ended up walking around the place meeting heaps of new people and watching a few people throw fire and juggle fire and spin fire and overall it was very exciting. The only concern is that they were doing all of this under a palapa (a structure with dead palm tree branches as the roof) and the whole building was made of just a few wood posts. There were quite a few times when the fire would pretty much hit the top of the palapa and I just kept imagining the whole place going up in flames. it was very exciting! The next day we woke up to the relaxing sound of rain dropping from the tree tops as well as the not so relaxing sound of howler monkeys all about. We decided since it was already raining we might as well go to the water falls. It turned out that it really didn´t rain that much but the sun never came out. We went to Misol-Ha waterfalls which were very beautiful and had a cave that you could walk into where the water was about knee deep. Then we set off for Agua Azul. It was pretty and fairly blue but the main part of the waterfall had been closed off because the trail to it had been destroyed by nautral causes, but I ended up swimming in the freezing cold blue water which was very refreshing .... and very very cold! we got back to our hostel after dark, had some coffee and drinks then headed off to bed. I have now arrived in San Christobal a beautiful city up in the mountains. It is soo gorgeous here, I love it a lot!! It is fairly cold but I am braving only wearing flip flops, jeans and a light jacket, while others are walking around in pea coats and big fluffy jackets. It does get really cold at night, but we each have two very warm blankets for our beds. The markets here are huge and the streets are smalls and hilly. We wondered around for a little bit yesterday and came across a carnival with bumper cars and all sorts of fun games. Everything closes down around 7 or 8 except some delicious restaurants so we only had about two hours to wander last night. We are now off to explore the city, buy some socks, jackets, and hats (which are all about $5 USD) all of which are hand made. and nice hand made, very warm, panchos for about $5-10 USD.
Until next time!!!
