Howard Johnson Palenque Mx

From San Cristobal we took a seven hour bus to Palenque. Having been warned against staying in the city, we opted for El Panchan - a travellers' hangout in the jungle just down the road. It was a cool place to stay; a collection of different hostels scattered through the forest, linked by jungle paths and tropical streams. One afternoon we returned to hear a strange, piercing roar, which we soon discovered was made by howler monkeys in the trees above. We ...

... unnerving incidents. The first was the banchiesque wail of a girl. It was a truly horrifying sound as she screamed and yelled things we couldn´t understand. Given the crustie clientele I perhaps wrongly assumed it was a drug related good time gone wrong in a bad trip type way so when Jody saw someone from the opposite hut open the door and let her in we fell straight back to sleep. However, from ear wigged conversations the next day Jody discovered that she had either been ...

... dusk we arrived in El Panchan. Another place unlike anywhere I had ever been, El Panchan was nothing but about six hostels, two bars and two resuraunts plonked in the jungle. We would walk out of our dorm room and be surrounded by big jungle trees, and would have to follow a path to a river, cross a bridge, continue through the jungle and then out of the jungle another hostel or bar would appear. It was very cool, some people woke up to howler ...

... saw the tree and plants in general as the circle of life. They understood the connection that we have with the earth and all plants. The Mayan symbol of the tree is basically a cross since the Ceiba tree often grows symmetric pairs of branches. When the Spanish arrived here they saw this symbol everywhere and used it to their advantage obviously by confusing it with the Christian cross. It`s strange to me that there are so many ...

... and I have to say it looks very beautiful.<br><br>We were off again, with two stops before we arrived in San Cristobal de la Casas. Our first stop was a waterfall called Agua Azul, although not very azul (blue), more brown due to the heavy rains we were having in the evenings. The stopped turned out to be interesting as I had two kids asking me if they could have my bike. Secondly, we ended up meeting a wonderful couple from Argentina by the names of Habien and ...

Stepping out of the plane in Villamosa was the first time on the trip that i had experienced the humidity down in Mexico. As you left the plane the air just engulfed you straight away, almost taking away the first breath as it was that strong and even bit of your exposed skin feels as if a hair dryer is on it while while the covered areas just give in straight away opening your paws providing a film of sweat that would never clear. I checked my bag reassuringly patting the large can ...

... We headed off to Palenque, driving out of town we quickly got into pretty dense rainforest. Being early in the morning there was a low mist and an almost spooky grey haze to the air. Palenque has been somewhere that I have always wanted to go. It was the desktop background of my computer at work for the last 3 months I was there, so when we arrived I was pretty excited, and it didnt let me down! When you enter the site the main, large buildings have been excavated, and you can climb all over ...

... in Palenque, we booked in at a Hotel from the Lonely Planet which was lovely, cheap and clean. It had been a long day, on our feet, so we were grateful for a hot shower, nice meal and good sleep before our bus the next night at 9pm. The next day we had to check out by 12 and wait 9 hours for the bus to Chetumal, the border town to Belize. We are all soooooo excited to be heading to the Carribean!

... cared we hadn't checked in. For the next 90 minutes, it was all about football. And Liverpool won in a crushing 2-0 victory. Of course. That night, the Superbowl was on. Pittsburgh Steelers versus the Arizona Cardinals in the biggest event in America's sporting calendar. In celebration, the guys running the hostel put on the best BBQ we'd laid eyes on in ...

... prospect - but one that we had to get used to pretty quickly. Despite the hour it was already a hive of activity. One of the last things I had done before sleeping on our long bus journey was to read up in our guidebook about where we were going. Whether it was the author's intention to sound alarmist I'm not sure, but he certainly makes Mexico City sound like a place for masochists with a death wish. There were quite a few warnings to the effect that one shouldn't ever get into a ...