Weblog: Mexico Day 4: Palenque to San Cristobal

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The main town of Palenque seems to be aimed at tourists who want to visit the nearby ruins, so there are lots of hotels, restaurants, etc. We visited the ruins at Palenque first thing in the morning. I love ruins, but I find that this kind of place, which charges an entrance fee, has manicured lawn everywhere, and restores the ruins, just isn't ruined enough for me. Nevertheless, it was impressive and it was nice to walk around in the woods in the tropical heat. Also there were smaller trails where most of the busloads of tourists didn't go that led to buildings that really were going back to the jungle.

After the ruins we went on our way to San Cristobal de Las Casas. The road was beautiful and in quite good condition, going up and up into the mountains. The scenery was beautiful and the vegetation was ever changing, and there were beautiful vistas around every corner. Somewhat disconcerting at first were the number of people walking along the road with machetes. Every once in a while you'd see a little building off the road, just connected to it by a trail.

We were dying for a swim, so we stopped at Agua Azul, and river that the Lonely Planet said had blue water and was great for swimming. Of course we had to pay an entrance fee to park, and the river was muddy brown, and for at least 1 km along the river there were little shops and comedores lining the trail. We kept walking along hoping to find a nice secluded place to swim, and just where all the shops ended there was a truckload of police who wouldn't allow us to go any further along the trail. So in the end we swam where there were several other Europeans, and it was great in the heat, but harly the ideal spot I had envisioned (and that seem to be so common around B.C.). At the turnoff to Agua Azul, there were women selling oranges and sugarcane, so we cought some oranges from them. Then on the way back out they pretty-much blocked the road to try to get us to buy some more. Yeesh.

We arrived in San Cristobal at dusk and drove around for a while looking for a place to stay that had parking. We arrived at the Magic Hostel, which was in a building that, like many colonial buildings, had a courtyard in the centre. So we actually drove the car into the hostel and were parked in the courtyard!

San Cristobal is a beautiful colonial city. It's quite small, which means there is very little sprawl outside of the downtown. Lots of lively markets, cobblestone and tile streets, restaurants and cafes, music, etc. Overall a very pleasant place. There were signs of the Zapatista movement everywhere, much of it in the form of graffiti. Also quite a military presence, there were men with machine guns all around the Zocalo. We wandered around town, did some suvenir shopping, explored the market, and ended the day with some good music in a cafe.

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Posted on Tue, 8 Oct 2020