The Mayan's

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  Palenque to Antigua, Mexico
Wednesday, February 13, 2008

February 4 -9

It was a hard drive from San Cristobal to Palenque, heading north into the lowlands from the high mountains by a twisting 2-lane highway of somewhat even surface. The temperature went up as we went down. We passed settlements of native people fenced into small plots in the early part of the journey and then twisted and crawled our way down the road. The natives are truly little people, some of them fully grown at what appeared to be no more than four feet tall. We passed turn-offs to ever more obscure villages and outlooks, dense forest on all sides. John did a magnificent job of navigating all the curves. Despite warnings to the contrary in some guidebooks, the road seemed quite safe, and we arrived at Palanque by 3 pm. Choosing a hotel with two swimming pools - one with a water slide - on the road the ruins, we settled in and swam off the dust and stiff muscles of the road. Although the hotel was still under partial reconstruction, its palapas were charming, with thick roofs of long tropical leaves on the restaurant/reception and scattered buildings of bedrooms. We drove down to the museum, checked out the details for the next day and bought a Spanish guidebook so Carol could practice.

The ruins of Palanque the next day were awe-inspiring. This culture existed from approximately 150 BC to 900 AD, ruled by dynastic families, then declined largely, it seems, from internal causes. The founder of the classic dynasty in 431 AD was K'uk'Balam-Quetzal-Jaguar. There were 6 or 7 major groups of buildings, including temples and tombs in the flat open space.

Palenque

On one side of the ceremonial center, a playing field for the Mayan version of handball seemed as large as a football field. The ceremonial buildings were all set on pyramid-like structures built of shaped oblong rocks, hand-hewn, about twice the height of normal stair steps. After climbing up and down several of the pyramids, we developed our own sideways gait that saved the aching muscles a bit. The living quarters were in the cool forest on both sides of a crystal-clear river with pools and waterfalls. They looked almost like apartment buildings. We crossed the river two or three times by suspension bridges of wire with wooden slats for floors. Finally, hot and very impressed by a culture that produce such architecture, we headed for the cool of the museum, where we saw excellent samples of their glyphic writing, portraits and pictures on stone tablets and learned about their sophistication in celestial reckoning. The presentation in the museum and of the site itself was excellent. We are told by other travelers that even Machu Pichu doesn't surpass this site. Stay tuned - we'll tell you in about two months.

On the 6th, we drove the hard road again to rejoin the road to the Guatemalan border and made it to a very small town with a little motel, mostly used by truck-drivers, but enclosed with an all-night guard. It was late afternoon, and we didn't want to keep going. Asking how much farther to the border, the guard looked somewhat surprised and pointed over our shoulders at the buildings 50 yards away.

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So we dined at an excellent local seafood restaurant, where we met a local who had lived in Santa Ana CA, spoke English very well and helped us order.


The next day was up early and across the border, which took some time with the paperwork. John had figured out that we needed a temporary import permit to transit the Jeep through Mexico, so we had all the proper papers, stickers and stamps to get out of Mexico and then the other papers, stickers and stamps to get into Guatemala. Through the border town, we were now on CA1, the Pan-American Highway, and one of the most beautiful drives of our life. We drove through the western highlands, with mountains rising on both sides of us and dense forests. At the beginning, it was the best highway of the entire trip, a two-line excellent surface, curvy and twisty, but great to drive. John said the Guatemalan government got lots of kudos. Since Mazatlan, we had averaged less than 35 miles a hour to drive 4 - 8 hours on poorly-built roads. Suddenly, our dreams were shattered by a massive road construction project that continued for 120 miles. The project is awesome; constructing a new 4-lane stretch through the breath-taking mountains and the highest point on the PanAm Highway, moving massive amounts of rock and dirt, keeping the highway open as two lane roads, sometimes pavement, mostly dirt, one long construction project. Periodically, they had to close the highway completely except for local traffic. The line-up and frustration would build, and finally the brave cars pulled into the oncoming lane and drove like crazy until we met the oncoming traffic doing the same thing.

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Somehow, we all got to the end.

We did have one adventure just after the border crossing. We saw people stopping the traffic on the road and then noticed they were all wearing black ski masks. So John stopped well short, until we could figure out they weren't armed. It turned out they were subtly collecting for a local charity - probably themselves. There was lots of traffic lined up on the other side being collected as well, but we wouldn't give them anything, and they didn't know what to do. Finally, we relented and gave them 20 quetzals, not quite $2, and got a lovely sticker in return citing the benefits of whatever group it was. The sticker seems to have gotten us through other groups of beggars who weren't masked without being solicited. John says it's like poppy day in the US.

The construction ended at Chimaltenango, north of Antigua Guatemala, our destination for the night and the ancient capital of Spanish dominion in Central America. As we headed south, we found a spectacular new stretch of highway that seemed to head in the right direction and zoomed along happily until we realized there weren't any exits to speak of and it didn't lead to Antigua. So we took the first exit we could find and stopped to ask a young girl how to get there. Happily, as she was telling us a very complicated set of instructions, a local bus arrived and she told us to just follow it. That we did, through a series of twisting local roads and villages that led us finally to the central bus station in Antigua, from whence we could locate our destination hotel.

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So here we sit on the balcony above the swimming pool, gazing at the active volcano with little spumes of steam, under a perfectly blue sky, surrounded by bougainvillea and palm-like trees with white bell-shaped flowers. Yesterday, we toured all the colonial Spanish ruins, destroyed by two earthquakes in the mid-to-late 18th century. The Spanish finally moved the capital to nearby Guatemala City, and the ruins stand as a romantic reminder of colonial power in a town that's become a center of Spanish languages schools, lovely hotels and restaurants and a musical and artistic colony. Last night, we ate excellent food at a restaurant half-owned by an American musician (professional percussionist before retiring), who also played the bongo and other drums in a "progressive Andean band." The music was a mixture of wooden pan flutes - you see them played a lot in markets in France - guitars and two sets of drums; fascinating rhythms and high-pitched, slightly breathy sounds.

Our last day in Antigua, we found the church that withstood the last earthquake. Designed by a Spaniard who figured out that high pointed arches were vulnerable, it has thick walls and low, squat arches and stands completely intact. We were at the other end of town and found an exceptional contemporary art gallery of Guatemalan and Central American artists that would stand up to anything in New York or Chicago. Dined on hand-made pasta in a small Italian restaurant, where the kitchen was upstairs and the menu written on a blackboard standing on an easel that was carried to each table.

More Pictures

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37	38	39	Jungle living
2	3	Road to Antigua	little people
2	3	1st class travel	2
from our room Antigua	2	3	1773 earthquake
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