road to ruin

Just wanted to say thanks for a the comments, many of which have made us laugh - keep them coming.

The ruins at Palenque are definitely worth a visit, they are very impressive, doubly so due to their picturesque jungle setting.

Not a jungle ruin (the photo uploading went wrong but took 2 hrs so we have left it) -Bobby who did very well out of us for tortilla scraps thanks to some very cute begging he's learned to do

Welcome to Palenque ruins and howler monkey refuge

Mario our guide explaining if we ever got lost in the jungle and had a machete to hand we could cut through a liana for a refreshing drink.

Butress roots

Mario encouraged us to eat termites fresh from the nest by putting our finger into it and eating ones that ventured on to us...sorry termites.  They tasted really earthy.

Surely this is called Birds nest fungus

the tree roots made amazing shapes

The Mayan ruins, this is El Palacio, the Palace built in stages from 5th-8th century 

Temple of the skull, its a rabbit skull.

Temple of the Inscriptions which housed the tomb of Pakal, a former ruler, his skeleton was found inside covered in jewels and a jade mosaic mask.

These stucco figures are always shown side on so that the deformed head shape can be seen.  Noble babies had there heads bound to produce long pointed skulls which accentuated the long nose.

The windows- 'Ik' openings are T shaped as the T represented the wind to encouraged air flow.  Ones on the bottom floor where the tombs are, are T's but upside down representing the Underworld, where the dead had gone.

Templo del Sol as seen from Templo de la Cruz.  The Cruz or cross represented the Ceiba tree or tree of life, the branches grow very horizontal and straight from the trunk.

Having been all round the ruins with nothing to eat all day we went a bit mad on the way home and ordered the local speciality which turned out to be a red hot cast iron bowl of bubbling sauce, strips of cactus, various meats and melted stringy cheese!  it was a bit hot for it really but we were very happy to have a huge jug of agua de fruta - Pina, fresh watered down pineapple juice -yum.

Totally Tropical

On the way to Palenque we had a bit of time between buses to check out the truly lovely San Cristobal de las Casas high up in the hills of Chiapas state and not too far from the Guatemalan border.  It had the highest percentage of indigenous people we'd seen anywhere, all wearing amazing woven woolen ponchos and tunics, really colourful.  The town is a stronghold for Zapatista sympathisers, Zapatistas have been fighting for rights for indigenous people who are unfortunately treated the same as we've seen in Alaska, Canada and rest of the states.... that is to say, terribly.

Another nativity display in the town plaza

The cathedral

There was a shop run by the Zapatistas on this road with loads of interesting stuff in there - we bought quite a lot of fabric embroidered with the Zapatistas represented as snails, the snails are symbolic of perseverance, slowly but surely the world will change for the better.  Here's a link about the 'Caracoles' http://www.bbc.co.uk/spanish/specials/1935_zapatistas/

I am not sure which brand of soda this is advertising

Sweets, yum -the coconut ones are particularly nice, unfortunately this time Fi choose what she thought was chocolate but turned out to be unidentifiable flavour and texture, very odd.  This stall was in a great little market full of amazing crafts.  There were several sweet stalls like this one and all the sweets were covered in bees (not a sanctioned ingredient) !

At the bus station.  The temperature must have been about 30c or so, it was definitely getting tropical now as we dropped down towards Palenque.  The buses are air conditioned so you need to wear a jumper on board and then when you get off its like stepping into an oven or maybe a steamer.

Yet another bus

The change in both atmosphere and climate was marked as we stepped off the bus in Palenque, a heavy rain shower had just finished and the streets were awash with water. The humidity was a real shock to the system, but it was not just that, the character of the area was much more south american. Overloaded mini vans buzzed about and the music that filled the streets was different, more upbeat and fast paced than the mariachi's of the more northern towns. When we stepped of the bus it was like entering another country.

This was for fast food delivery rather than random decoration

We had made our way to Palenque to see the ruins in the jungle but we decided to spend our first night in the town. Sadly our choice of hotel was slightly unfortunate, they insisted on playing extremely loud euro techno to a completely empty bar - luckily they turned it down, and back up again, the three seperate times I went to complain. Each time there were a couple of the young staff tapping their feet in reception miles away from the completely empty bar.  Of course normally we'd have been down there dancing but we had had absolutely no sleep on the night bus on the way there despite having the world most plush and comfy bus seats on our Platino class journey.  The route was ridiculously windy so you couldn't keep in one place in the seat all night!

Gecko at the hotel

As heavens opened again we couldn't face going out to look for food - the hotel restaurant was inexplicably done out like a wedding venue, perhaps just in case one came up. Ralph was particularly pleased with the multilingual card on the table thanking the one and only lord for the food about to be received.

The hotel dog was cute but was a bit barky

The hotel pool was nice and Ralph had an after breakfast dip just before we set off for the ruins...........

If only place names were allowed in Scrabble....

....then Oaxaca would undoubtedly be high scoring were it to be allowed, but it is arguably even more exciting than its theoretical word score, because of what it offers both in terms of crafts and culture.

Ralph enjoying empanadas at the fairground

The fair, part of the same Virgin de Guadalupe celebrations that were going on in Mexico city, was in full swing.  Ralph was particularly impressed with the handmade backgrounds at the shooting gallery including full size Terminator and Michael Jackson figures.

So many stalsl of all types of food

An elaborate street corner

One street had lots of artists workshops and galleries on it.  The walls were covered in pictures.

We visited this artist Cesar Chavez doing wood cut printing, see more of his work at www.cesarchavez79.blogspot.com

Church of Santo Domingo

Oaxaca is full of markets and everything is so colourful.  Look at this ladies dress, amazing.  I seem to be very pleased with this purchase!

There were hundreds of miniature 'day of the dead' models, we couldn't think of anyone to buy this one for so took a picture instead!  Day of the Dead, November 2nd is celebrated by families all over Mexico by visiting graves of family members with gifts, flowers, favourite foods of the dead person and there are special decorations including these skeletons.

Day of the dead figures

This sweet old couple we met in the craft shop were really nice!

Dried flowers arranged around the doorway of the bookshop, with a welcoming skeleton lady.

Too much food!  We took what we could in a doggie bag and gave it to a little boy who had been hiding from the waiters in between the tables.

We had a song 'Mexico Lindo'played to us by a Mariachi band with a great trumpet player.

Grasshoppers for sale at the market, small, medium and large, we took a mixed bag, they are roasted and really salty.

Grasshoppers

A Oaxacan speciality is Mole a rich sauce that comes in 7 different colours, we had red and black, black has chocolate in it.

Ralph tucking into his grasshopper snacks

Posada Don Mario

 At Los Girasoles - The Sunflowers restaurant we were given a shot of Mescal which is served with lime and an orange salty substance which we later read is crushed roasted Maguey worm, the caterpillar that lives on the agave plant that Mescal comes from.  We added a comment in the extensive visitor book.

The owner Mario ( in the green top) was quite a character.  He'd lost his legs from having diabetes so he ran the place from his chair.  He wanted to know what I thought of Oaxacan men and Ralph of the local ladies...also some football chat and he said he thought English people seem aggressive compared to other tourists, well that's what we imagined his mime to mean as our Spanish only gets us so far!

Stupid gringos took several attempts to get the parcel correctly addressed, wrapped but in the end the initially scary post office lady looked pleased with our efforts.  Other stupid gringos in the background doing the same!  Oh the parcel was the result of overindulgence in craft shopping.

One of several Christmas/nativity scenes set up in the main plaza, though elaborate this one lost out to the nativity with hundreds of ceramic sheep and a volcano which was complete with scaffolding walkway for viewing it from.

A bad photo of the volcano in the plaza

Ralph was very excited to hear about the worlds largest tortilla on display in the museum, too big even for him to manage.

Detail on the world's largest tortilla

View from the museum into the plaza

Mural on the museum wall

This stray dog was weaving in and out of the restaurant tables and we were surprised that it wasn't getting chased off...then Ralph worked out what was going on when he saw that the dog was stalking and chasing off pigeons on the tables so doing the restaurant a favour!

Raw chips of an unidentified fruit or veg which was like a cross between apple, cucumber and celariac, covered with lime juice and black pepper with our jug of orange juice.

What a shame to miss this 'Noche de Rabanos', Night of the Radishes.  It looks as though everything is carved out of radishes!