Next we headed into the Lacandon jungle, more specifically to El Panchan (a seemingly random selection of cabins amidst all the greenery). A restaurant, Don Mucho’s, provides food, drinks and live music for whoever happens to end up there. They served a honey Strongbow which made my day and somewhere along the way they installed a wood-fired pizza oven, so the pizzas were a highlight for Tom! We ate well thanks to this surreal establishment, and would fall asleep to the sounds of the jungle with our bellies full. Insects chirped all night, howler monkeys never gave up claiming their territory, and one particular bird always tweeted the same song each morning next to our window at around 7am.
El Panchan is right next to the Palenque ruins, which are one of the biggest Mayan sites in Mexico (although only a small section has been excavated). It’s much larger and older than Chichén Itzá, and with the jungle as its backdrop it’s incredibly beautiful. The most famous temple is the one in the photo, where King Pakal’s tomb was discovered. Aside from this temple, visitors are allowed to climb all the ruins in Palenque, which we took full advantage of. The Palace was amazing, with various patios and passages to explore, especially the area where captives were brought before the nobility. Up the hill there was another section of temples, the Sun Temple (amazing roofcomb), the Cross Temple (this was huge and had lots of levels) and another temple that had fallen and now looked like Hansel & Gretel’s fairytale house. The amazing thing about these three temples is that when you climbed inside you were met with a stucco relief (similar to a carving in cement) that depicted a section of the history of those living here. We also looked through the Ball Court, Count Waldeck’s temple (where the English ‘explorer’ lived for a while), the Queen’s Bath and the museum (which houses many of the statues and icons from the temples, all in their original colours).
One day we decided to get a guide to show us through the jungle, so off we went one morning with Carlos! He didn’t fancy following any form of path and preferred to squeeze between the trees and under branches to show us the different plants and their medicinal, hallucinogenic or colouring function. It was so interesting, he speaks Zhol at home (one of the many Mayan languages) and was explaining how many Mayan customs are still very strong in the area. He pointed out how we were walking on hundreds of ruins that have now become part of the jungle, but he did show us the Hidden Temple that poked out from the greenery. It was here that we spotted our first Mexican howler monkey, snoozing in a tree, and later saw a family swinging about in the branches (they are a lot smaller than their deep howling suggests). We also saw a few toucans with their colourful beaks, and finally Carlos showed us to a small waterfall and pool where we couldn’t resist a dip in the fresh spring water.
We fancied a bit more swimming so headed to the Misol-Ha waterfall, which plummeted down from an impressive height, at incredible speed and strength. We repeatedly tried to swim as close as possible to its base but the force continued to push us back, it was huge. Next we went to Agua Azul which was a series of waterfalls that ran into turquoise pools, needless to say that a lot more swimming took place. It was hard to imagine that the colour of the water (caused by the calcium minerals in the riverbed) was real. The viewpoint at the top was really something, as we watched the blue water cascading down various levels until it disappeared into the jungle. We didn’t manage to take any photos of these two spots as we were busy swimming about, but search them up on Google as they’re so stunning!
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