Travels with Hayley

Today we were off for an early morning visit to an archeological site again (which I was not really looking forward to – more old stones…) so we hit the Mega Mart next door for provisions to sustain us through the outing. Musings today included the fact that Mexico has a mad amount of different stuff that is all essentially bread with sugar on – including in the bakery section today literal slices of buttered bread sprinkled with sugar. Also fascinating was the produce section – I wonder how long you would have to live here before seeing cactus leaves for sale next to the spuds didn’t seem weird anymore?

Fuelled with sugary breads and some fruit (no cactus, sorry), we arrived to the Mayan Temples of Palenque and met our guide for the next couple of hours – Jose Luis. As happens so often on these trips, it teaches you a valuable lesson about pre-judgement, because it turned out I loved the ruins! Jose Luis (let’s get friendly and call him JL from now on shall we…) did an amazing job of bringing the history alive with all the important facts and figures mixed in with some fascinating grizzly details to keep us all enthralled!

The Tomb of the Red Queen resides here, so called because when it was found and excavated, the bones of the Queen and her servants (who apparently were given large quantities of magic mushrooms before being killed in order to serve her in the afterlife…I’m sure that made them feel much better about the whole thing…) were covered in red cinnabar powder. Which is highly toxic and dissolves DNA. You can imagine the conspiracy theories off the back of this – more than one scientific study has genuinely stated alien involvement…

The prevailing (and less insane) theory is because she was buried with jade artificats, pearls and other treasures, the poison was used to keep looters away from the tomb. Which seems vastly more sensible but possibly doesn’t get your academic paper on the front pages…There’s all sorts of other theories about the site, many linking it to Christianity as there’s 33 dots on one of the wall carvings which was the age of Christ when he died, and apparently a quote that can be atributed to the bible carved into a wall inside one of the structures. Who knows. Maybe aliens isn’t as far fetched as all that after all!

The ruins are amazingly well preserved and really reminded me of the ones in the jungle in Cambodia that I loved. The carvings were fascinating, they seemed to worship those who were physically different, born with disabilities and deformities, as they believed these differences made them special – what a shame that line of thinking hasn’t continued through the ages. Particular details that appealed to me (as I am in fact a 7 year old at heart apparently) were as follows:

1. A toilet room was found with 5 communal toilets in – it’s assumed that meetings were taken in there whilst the facilities were being used – which you really can’t argue isn’t an excellent example of multitasking at work.

2. They had an astronomer to predict the weather – when he knew rain was coming, he would arrange a ceremony and pull out the tongue of a female royal and an – even more delicate appendage – from a male royal. The commoners would be told this sacrifice would bring the rains – when the rain duly arrived, this would be ‘proof’ that the royals were indeed gods and everyone would be happy to crack on and keep doing their bidding. Brings a whole new level of meaning to power hungry when you’re willing to have your winkle pulled out to prove a point doesn’t it!

3. One of the carvings seems very much to suggest that people got around the site on – wait for it – roller skates. I literally cannot tell you how much I want this to be true. I wouldn’t have had to worry about getting my tongue wrenched out though would I, I’d have killed myself with the skates long before that!

Exploring the site further, we climbed to the very top of one of the pyramids with the sound of the resident howler monkeys haunting screams echoing in the trees around us (each pack of monkeys has one alpha male and then a whole bunch of ‘wives’ and children. As JL sagely observed – ‘Phew. Busy monkey…’) and butterflies fluttering around our heads, while we kept a careful eye out for the banana spiders we were assured were as big as the palm of our hand. You could hear the gurgling water from the ancient aquaducts that are still running underneath (they built things to last did the Mayans apparently) and the sweaty climb was worth every step when we could see the spectacular site laid out below us.

JL was a mine of information as well as having a bone dry sense of humour – while telling us about the belief that the Mayans ran a matriarchal society (whoop, girl power!) he assured us he had no problem with this premise at all – he had in fact been married twice you know! I quipped ‘so far…’ and that idea did seem to appeal to him rather…Other highlights included him telling stories of his formidable mother who can apparently quiet the room of his 12 siblings with a single look, and telling us a tree nearby had a really strong smelling trunk – it wasn’t until we had all given it a good close sniff that he remembered to mention you have to slice the bark open with a knife first…

After a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours, we headed for brunch where I had a very weird plate of ‘pancakes’ which I’m fairly sure were dollops of porridge fried into circles, that came ‘with fruit’. I’m not exaggerating when I say that fruit consisted of:

1. 1 grape – small, sliced

2. Two thirds of a strawberry

3. 3 slivers of banana.

Thank goodness I had a trusty guanábana juice again or I’d be dying from scurvy now I’m sure. Much excitement on the way out as we spotted an iguana with a weird stumped tail – being the jaded traveller I am and having seen hundreds of these in Costa Rica I was a bit less excited but as group photographer was dispatched to get as close as possible for good snaps!

Onto the bus for our nine hour journey – put it this way, this is not an experience I am keen to repeat any time soon. The company had sent the most cramped mini bus you’ve ever seen – as you all know, I’m not exactly blessed in the vertical department yet even I couldn’t fit my knees in without twisting to one side. After the ride to breakfast I could feel myself getting increasingly claustrophobic and panicky so asked JJ if he would swop the front seat with me. Which he duly did, potentially without realising what he was signing up for – suffice to say by the time we had arrived he’d sent half a dozen complaint emails to the hire company! Everyone else bagged a stretch of seats where they could and stretched out but the bumps in the road made it really difficult to relax in any way. To add insult to injury – and bearing in mind it was the hottest and most humid day of the trip so far – the air conditioning was broken. And we couldn’t open the windows as it was so dusty.

It was all fairly horrendous, you just felt completely stupefied in the damp and limpid air. I couldn’t do anything except stay as still as possible, nap in snatches between bumps and listen to audio books. 9 hours, 3 bathroom stops and an ice lolly (the highlight of the trip) later, we arrived a sad and sweaty mass in Merida, part of the Yucatán region of Mexico.

Fearing if we laid down we may not get up again, we headed straight out to a fancy outdoor food court style place where you could order all sorts of cocktails and get various foods from the stations around. I tried the chorizo and avocado ciabatta which was very nice but my appetite had been murdered by the punishing heat by that point – I ate about a quarter with Lynsey helping me out with some of the bread and then we gave up and called it quits, heading back to the hotel within an hour of arrival!

But never mind the heat and the journey now – it’s done, we survived to tell the tale and it makes a good story! Tomorrow is a city tour, maybe some pool time and who knows what else to come. Every day is a new (sweaty) adventure..,

Lots of love always xxx