Day 182 - The Agua Azul & Misol-ha Waterfalls & The Archaeological Site Of Palenque

Today is another big day of driving & sight seeing which will see us start from San Cristobal at 4.00am & finish in Palenque at around 6pm.

We were both lying awake at 3am listening to someone in the opposite room having a deep, heart-felt, very drunk & loud conversation with someone they met that night. Hahaha, it was slightly amusing & meant that we didn't need to the sound from the alarm to wake up & get ready.
When we were waiting in the common room to be picked up in the tour van, a group of people we knew from the hostel just arrived home after a big night. Tom joined them for 1 beer before we were picked up.

Todays tour van was a lot bigger & more comfortable than yesterday's. We got seat's in the front next to the driver, which I was relieved about. The road today promises to be windy.
To pretty much fell asleep straight away, while I stayed awake & shared in a few giggles with the driver when Tom would make some sleepy noises.
The landscape was very very pretty & I was awake to see the sun come up.

We stopped at around 6.30am for a breakfast buffet! Thank god, it won't be like yesterday.
I wasn't really hungry & was disappointed with the pancakes that were burnt, but Tom had a huge pile of Mexican style breakfast options on his plate & was very satisfied.
Shortly after this we would arrive at our first waterfall, The Cascades de Agua Azul!
The stunning waterfall's & the Xanil river are found in the State of Chiapas, around 69 kilometres from Palenque.

We were told to be back in 2 hours & set free! The series of waterfalls we saw here were definitely my favourite. You could hear them & feel the vibrations rumbling through the ground. We could of easily spent the whole day here. There was beautiful walkways next to the river with several view points,  market stalls selling all sorts of souvenirs, food stalls, beer's or freshly squeezed juice. Apart from the water fall 7 river, there was pockets of jungle with elevated wooden walkways & signs with potential animal sightings listed. I got way too excited about the signs having pictures of Tucan's & spent a considerable amount of time looking up. Sadly, it wasn't meant to be today! Ill have to see a Tucan somewhere else.

It was at this place, where I peeled my shoes & socks off, to sit next to the river with my feet in the water that I would hear an unusual disturbance behind me & glimpse the last few microseconds of disaster striking. Tom went to buy a beer & as he has returned & stepped out on some of the rocks near where I was sitting, his foot slipped & he slid down off the side of the rocks & into some mud. From the sounds, he tried multiple time's to recover his footing, however the surface of the rocks was disastrously slippery & it was too late. He didn't spill a drop of beer though & apart from smearing mud up his leg, wetting one of his boot's & the same sock, he was unscathed. I was in hysterics.

It's normally me who can't navigate on any terrain without stumbling, slipping, tripping, floundering, blundering, wobbling, tottering, falling or just basically going tits up. Laugh it up folks, I sure did!

After we met the tour group back at the bus & we began our journey to the next waterfall. The Cascada Misol-ha, located only 20 kilometres from Palenque was one of the most beautiful waterfalls we have ever seen. It drops down 35 metres into an almost perfectly shaped, circular pool at the bottom & is surrounded by lush vegetation. There is a walkway that takes you behind the waterfall & into a cave at the back. It was truly gorgeous! We only had 30 minutes here to explore, if we had our own way, it would be a perfect spot for a day out in nature. I could of stared at this waterfall all day.

This would be our last waterfall today & the next stop was lunch in the town of Palenque at a resort that offers an amazing buffet. The food here was absolutely phenomenal. We piled our plates high with different types of fresh salads, chilli, fruit & tortillas. Tom brought beers, that were nearly abandoned, because the food was so good & kept us so busy. haha

After lunch we drove 20 minutes to The Archaeological Zone of Palenque! something we were really excited to see. In ancient times the Mayan city was known as Lakamha, which basically translates into 'big water'. It saw its peak during the 7th dynasty & then was abandoned & absorbed by the surrounding jungle. A 2.5 square kilometre area, which is an estimated 10% of the city has been excavated & restored, which is what can be seen today. Dating done places the ruins between 226 BC to AD 799. It is one of the most important Masoamerican archaeological sites & definitely one of the most amazing.

The structure's are very large & the excavated site feel's huge, showing off various temple's, palace's, alter's & large scale plumbing. The city is very close to a river & receives a lot of rain fall, it has a very advanced drainage & water redirection solution that prevented erosion & stopped the city from sinking. Evidence of the giant drainage system's & bridges is still very evident now & helped preserve the ruins. We love how the ruins just appear out of the surrounding jungle.
We only had a few hours here & as usual it didn't feel like enough time to explore! This is one of the only negatives about doing tours.



















































We are always so amazed at how advanced ancient civilisations were & what they left behind, which still amazes hundreds of thousands of people every year. This is my favourite archaeological site so far! It was here that we saw our first Iguana! It was only a small one, about the size of my arm & Tom spotted it lying in a heap of leaf litter next to a big tree. It was very shy, but we managed to gawk at it for a few seconds & take some photos.

After we had finished at the Palenque ruins, the tour van dropped us & some other people off in the centre of Palenque. The people who stayed on the tour van have a long drive back to San Cristobal.
This was such a good way to travel between the 2 towns. Palenque is a small town, though extremely humid when we were there. we could hear an approaching thunder storm, which was really no surprise. We easily found our hotel & brought some cold Coronas to sip on in the room.
Today's cold shower was magical after all the travel, exercise & sweat. We both indulged in a manuka honey face mask that I brought from home.

We went out much later for a small dinner in a small restaurant. Neither of us were very thrilled with what we ordered, but ate it anyway of course.
After dinner we fell asleep in the very large king size bed with the air con going, after watching a few episodes of a really old black & white TV series about spies. It was the only thing in English & was very amusing.

- Alli

Day 181 - Chiflon waterfalls & Montebello lakes

Our day started at 7am with an alarm. Even though I was in bed & asleep before 10pm, I was still tired. Tom went out drinking last night with a big group from the hostel, he's looking a little bit worse for wear this morning, but still manages to jump out of bed before me.
The tour van picks us up outside the hostel just after 8am & we choose seats at the back thinking we'd have more room, lol. We drive through the town collecting another 9 people & the van gets very full.

The town of San Cristobal de la Cases is so lovely, especially in the morning. The houses are beautiful pastel colours, the streets are brickwork & there is plants everywhere. If you look towards the edge of town you can see clouds hanging low over the mountains & the sun rays slanting down casting shadows on the early morning before eventually penetrating through the clouds.
It's a lot of driving today, something we guessed after looking at the locations of the waterfalls on the maps.
We definitely weren't told about the distances though. Still, it's nice to see rural Mexico & the way farming families & communities live. Mexico is very pretty & in the short amount of time we have been here, we have seen very different habitat. Everything we would see today is really green & surprisingly there are a lot of pine trees. We don't see a cactus or dry chunk of land anywhere.
There are still lots of mountains & I'm feeling reasonably motion sick as we wind our way through the land.
I'm grateful that I only are a banana for breakfast. Tom pretty much sleeps the whole way there.


We arrive at our first stop after nearly 3 hours of driving. The chiflon water falls. We see the blue water & the mist cutting through the side of the green mountain a few kilometres before we get there. At 120 metres tall, it's a real eye catcher, even from the distance.

After we arrived, our driver handed us over to a guide. Tom & I didn't really know what was going on & the guide only spoke Spanish, so we found ourselves following the group, so we didn't accidentally get lost or left behind. Looking back, I wish we knew that 3 of the other people in our group could speak English & that we could have asked for a meeting time to be back at the van & be left to do our own explorations.

The waterfall was quite nice, as was the walkways around it & the multiple view points. We were a little bit disappointed that in some areas you could see humans had interfered & redirected the water with ugly pipes & cement barricades.
We had 2 hours here, before arriving back at the van & continuing on to the Montebello national park & the lakes.

It was another couple of hours driving. We shared some biscuits & finished off our water. It was hotter than we anticipated. We had another banana packed but Tom discovered it squished through the bottom of the bag, which was disappointing & funny all at the same time. We both napped awkwardly in the van trip & woke with stiff & sore necks.

At the first lake (I'm not sure what any of the 3 lakes are called & I would only be guessing the name's) we went down a walkway & paid extra to use a kayak. We spent an hour kayaking around in the 3 lakes that were connected to each other & divided by the cliff formations. The water was these amazing colours of blue varying from a deep blue to a nearly clear turquoise. In some sections it was very deep, but we could see all the way down to the bottom.
We paddled out to a section at the back of the 3rd lake where there was a slightly sandy/pebbled section of 'beach' where Tom had a swim. I didn't want to get fully wet cause by this stage it was 4pm & there was a slight wind blowing through the trees that hinted at the cold to come tonight. I really wish we had arrived at the lakes first.

Our next lake was set up very similar to this, however in the carpark there was stalls selling Mexican souvenirs such as sombreros & poncho's and food stalls. Thank god! By this time it was 5pm & we had barely eaten anything today. We were both starting to get grumpy & I had a pounding headache.
We found a stall with 2 elderly Mexican ladies with kind faces. We ordered 2 x meals. All we knew was that they had some Cheese wrapped in banana leaves & we said  'No carne, Vegetariano" like 5 times.
What they served us was genuinely delicious! There was the fresh made cheese, which they heated up inside the banana leaves, It was quite nice & tasted like a mix between haloumi, feta & mozzarella. This was accompanied with brown beans, salsa, pico de gallo, avocado, mushrooms, lettuce, tomato & a huge stack of fresh, warm tortillas.
The food was gone, instantly, they watched us scoffing it down, looking very amused before hurrying to heat up more tortillas. We paid 220 pesos, for the meals & 2 bottles of water, a bit more expensive than your average street food but totally worth it.

After this we drove to the 3rd & final lake which was just a parking lot with a view across a bridge at the lake & the houses set up on the other side. from here, we could see Guatemala! No wonder it felt like we had been driving all day, we have covered a lot of kilometres.

The drive back was long & uncomfortable. My denim pants & bikini's didn't dry out properly after the kayaking & became itchy.
We were both impatient to get back & to pack our stuff. despite not doing much today, we felt exhausted.

On arrival back in the town of San Cristobal, just after 9pm,  the streets were absolutely packed with people & was midway through a festival celebrating the Mexican independence day. We knew that this was happening & regretted once again, that we were on a very tight timeline. It would have been so nice to have been going back to get ready & then head out for a night of celebration. Everyone we saw on the street was so happy.

It's sad to be writing that we were well behaved & that we did actually go back to the hostel, shower, pack our bags & got into bed. We had about 5 hours before our 3.30am alarm would go off & we would need to be up again.

- Alli

This is a screenshot from of Tom's Google Map's account, which shows how close we were to Guatemala when we were at the 3rd lake. The yellow star's on the map is where we were standing.