Palenque! (Still Tuesday, September 11, 2007)

I’m not that familiar with Palenque and haven’t done too much research on it. My great uncle, Roderick, had visited Chichen Itza and Uxmal in the 1930’s so we’ve researched those sites. All I knew about Palenque was that it was beautiful, in the mountains, and it is the site where the tomb of Pacal was discovered in a temple. That tomb is best known for the carving that was inscribed on the top of the tomb. You see it everywhere down here, on leather hangings, faux limestone reliefs, posters, T-shirts. He was the ruler of Palenque for almost 50 years, which is an incredibly long time. Most of the people didn’t live past 40 in the Mayan empire.

We drove down the road from the hotel to the park entrance. Mexico has learned well from the US, and they charge for everything. $2 just to drive into the park. We drove up a road that circled around the mountain, and could see just green jungle on either side. At the end of the road is a large parking lot to the left, with lots of concessions on either side. We pulled into that and a swarm of young men selling necklaces, shirts, sodas, water, trinkets, you name it, surrounded the car. We got out and one earnest and eager young man grabs Bob’s arms and asks him, in perfect English, if he would like his car that he has driven all the way from California to be washed. I’m impressed and a little wary. If he’s that observant, does that mean he’s casing the car? He tells Bob that he and his friend can wash the car for us while we tour the ruins, and it’s only $5 American. Bob is looking at me and I’m telling him that it’s just going to get dirty again. And the car is REALLY dirty. It’s covered in dust and grime from the mountain roads, and the windows are streaked from the rain. Bob tells the guy, ok, gives him $50 pesos, and we attempt to get our admission ticket to the ruins. But first, we have to break through the Hematite Curtain of jewelry peddlers. One insistent man is following me and holding out amber jewelry to show me, and holding a lighter below it to show me that it’s not plastic, doesn’t melt. I’m trying to be nice and patient and friendly and kind and a good tourist, but I just really want to go see the ruins – so I tell him, in English, that I want to see the ruins before they close (in an hour and a half) and that I’ll look at what he has on the way out. He seems to accept this, so we finally get to the ticket booth. $45.00 pesos/$4.50 US to get in – a bargain! We got our tickets and then head to the admission booth. I think Disney has done the entrance design and training here.

After we get out tickets taken, we enter the park. We are asked if we want a tour guide – Bob is looking like he does, but I want to be able to see as much as we can, and the tour guides tend to stop at one building and talk about it for about 15 minutes – so we’re only going to get to see 4 buildings if we do that. I tell Bob, no, let’s just get in and at least see what we can, and we can come back another time and get the guide. He agrees. This is what we’ve done at Chichen Itza before and it’s worked well.

You enter Palenque up some stone stairs that might or might not be ruins – hard to tell. The lead to a path that curves around and as you come out of the curve, you break through jungle on either side that opens up to an amazing sight. There are ruins everywhere you look, all enclosed in jungle. There is a hill in the background, with buildings and jungle on top of it. Straight ahead is the main palace, and it is a formidable building. To the right is the Templo de Canejo – Temple of the Rabbit – named because it has a carved rabbit skull stucco on one of the pillars. The Mayans (and the Mexicans) think that the moon looks like it has a rabbit on its face – instead of the Man on the Moon, they have the Rabbit on the Moon. So this temple probably had something to do with the moon… I’ll do some research and let you know.

To the left of this temple is a smaller temple, that has a palapa constructed over the stairway that leads up to what looks like an offering area. It looks like the Mayan version of a funeral home. Maybe it is? To the left of that building is the large temple of Pacal. This is where Pacal’s tomb was discovered. This building is taaaallll. We didn’t climb any of these buildings because we didn’t know how much time we had and what more there was to see.

As you walk past this group of buildings, there is a large, flat building on the left that kind of reminded me of the observatory at Chichen Itza, without the observatory (if that makes any sense!) This building has a small tower on the top of it, and I started calling it the Clock Tower. Straight ahead, built across a pretty good sized stream that runs through the site, is a group of buildings that are situated on top of a hill, and I guess overlook the site. We didn’t get up to these either, but one of them is called Templo del Sol, so I definitely need to come back to explore that one. You know I love anything Sol! ;)

There is a large, grassy courtyard outside of this area, and vendors have set up “stalls” to sell their wares. The stalls consist of a big blanket, or group of blankets, spread out on the grass with the arts and crafts spread out on the blankets. A lot of the vendors were taking their siestas on the grass in the shade next to their blankets. We got an etching on leather of Pacal’s tomb for Bob and one of a toucan for me. I also got two more Mexican cloth belts (my favorite, since they are so adjustable – you just tie them!) and a really pretty scarf. There was a little girl named Lady with her mother who was selling the scarf and the belts. I asked her her name and she told me “cinturon” – she thought I was asking what the belts were called! She was adorably cute and about 8 years old. I think all of the little Mayan kids are so cute!

I walked up the path that parallels the stream and went to investigate it. It was running pretty quickly and had little waterfalls in it. You could hear it rushing past, and when you got near it, it was pretty loud. To the left of the stream were stairs that led up to another group of temples, but we couldn’t see any of them from below. We just knew that they were there from the map layout that we saw at the entrance. Exploring those will have to wait for another visit, another time.

I walked back to the vendor area and the buildings on the hill and Clock Tower. From this group of buildings, there is a path that leads to the Juego de Pelota, or ball court. This ball court was one of the smaller ones that we have seen (at Chichen Itza and Coba). Down from that ball court is another large group of buildings, with a temple at the end. I couldn’t resist, so I climbed up that one. 33 steps. I’m not aware of any significance to that number, but I’m sure there is one, or a reason for its height. It had an offering space at the top, as most temples do, and had little square windows on the three sides that were enclosed. There were amazing views of the jungle and the site from the top of this temple. It was so quiet and peaceful – all I heard up there were the sounds of the birds in the jungle. There was a little green jay that was laying up there, dead. I think it tried to fly through the little window and hit the wall instead. I felt so bad for it but I left it there. I didn’t want to mess with Mother Nature or the Mayan gods.

We took some pictures here and it was really nice. We were the only people left at the site by now, and the vendors were packing up their things and leaving. It was about 4:00 or so and the site closes at 4:45, so we still had some time left to explore, but we were both tired, and ready for some R&R. So, we followed the maintenance path out, past jungle and greenery, and saw a woodpecker sitting on one of the branches close to the ground. We saw vines hanging from trees and I could imagine Tarzan swinging through at any moment. I was half tempted to try to swing from one myself, but decided against it. My knee had been holding out so far, hiking, climbing up and down temples… I don’t want to push it!

We left through the same way that we had come in, and there was my little Mayan jeweler, waiting for me. He kept showing me rosaries that were made of amber, not plastic, and kept holding the lighter underneath to prove it to me. This was kind of scaring me – I was worried that he was going to burn his finger, but I guess he is used to doing this 100 times a day. I ended up getting an amber rosary with a hematite crucifix on it. Even though I’m not Catholic, I do appreciate the beauty and the sentiment behind a rosary. Maybe one of these days, I’ll actually find out how to use one! It can’t hurt, right? I also got another necklace that has little tiny conch spirals on it that dangle down, and hematite squares. I told the nice guy No Mas! No tengo dinero! No more – I don’t have any money! And he was nice and went on his way. Bob had wandered over to a shop that had shirts – he wanted to get a Palenque T-shirt. I thought he meant one that said “Palenque” on it or something, but he found his favorite kind – the tie dyed kind with a batik picture of Pacal. It pictures him sitting and holding what looks like a pina colada from Hawaii – the kind that you get in the coconut with the pineapple top sticking out. I’m sure it is some other kind of offering tho! I went over to meet Bob and saw a tank top in Army green, that has the animals of the Mayan zodiac on it… sixteen of them, and includes my favorites, jaguar and perro. So I got that - $5.50! Another cute young man came over showing me more amber jewelry – they have lots of other colors and stones, but somehow they seem to know that I favor yellow – and I ended up buying a bracelet and a pair of earrings from him that matched the rosary from the other guy. They are all probably in cahoots together and had me marked from the get go!