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...........