Guides, Tours and Packaged Deals!
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2005
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41
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Trip End
Dec 04, 2006
Palenque, Agua Azul, Santa Clara and Mis-Ha, Mexico
Friday, November 25, 2005
The ruins in Palenque are the type of ruins you would construct in a Factory if there ever was such a thing. At such a grand scale you could only imagine the amount of Guides, Tour Groups, Buses and Handicraft sellers there were scattered throughout the impressive grounds. We however only paid for transportation so our funky mexican driver dropped us off with his ever so professional tone and attitude at the gates and gave us exactly 4:00 hours to roam the site and be back at "THIS POINT @ 12:15 PRONTO". Which is good to see actually as I have been used to the usual "Be ready 15 minutes before and weŽll pick you up half and hour after the specified time" routine.
01 Welcome to Palenque
Choc-a-block with tourists it was hard to find peace and quiet in the surroundings with Guides speaking Spanish, English, German and Italian whilst directing them up and down the ruins "This way please....Through here please......Enter here please......Wait here please....". Again at these ruins I felt compelled to climb up everything and anything I was allowed to whilst Amber stood there shaking her head.Herded like cattle we jumped onto another mini van and was whisked away to Mis-Ha waterfalls. Nice, to many tourists again next attraction
Off we were to Agua Azul which more or less was a souped up version of Shemuc Champey in Guatemala. The cascades here were far more impressive but because of this you were not permitted to swim in some parts. The path that lead up the mountain besides the cascades seemed to be endless and after an hour of walking up we gave up and started to head back down to a lady who was cooking up some fresh Empanadas and we sat there eating them happily whilst being introduced to the friends of a Highschool girl who was compelled to show us all her school friends that walked past whilst giving them nicknames such as Smart, Sexy, Stupid and Boyfriend. Highly amusing!
With time to spare Santa Clara was added as a bonus activity and spent a very quick 10 minutes there were I and 11 others including a mother and son combination, clambered and raced up to the overhanging bridge that crossed the lake for some quick happy snaps and back to the bus which I have to say was in record time.
Action packed and exhausted we made our way back and wandered the streets for food and found the best hamburgers ever off this street vendor. With finesse in preperation and variety of ingredients we were treated to burger buns doused with tomato sauce, mayonaise, bacon, ham, tomato salsa, two types of cheese, avocado, all beef patty and chilli!!!! I was in heaven, managed to eat one and a half burgers even before we got to the hotel.....needless to say that I was very very proud of myself and that I was going to have a very lovely nights sleep.
