Day 5 – Arriving in Palenque – 13th Nov 2016 (Sunday)

Urgh. The overnight bus. It’s as if my bowels know. I got the shits. Bad times.

But apart from that, the bus was fine. I sat near the loo. Thank goodness the bus wasn’t too full.

We arrived in Palenque at 7am, and cleaned up in the, as always, immaculate ADO bus station. Then we got a taxi to the ruins, which are about 5km out of town, high up in the jungle.

I was shattered and walked around in a daze. The jungle was impressive and because of the rains it was steamy and picturesque. We saw and heard howler monkeys. We walked up some ruins and then it started pouring with rain – jungle style. We sheltered in the temple of the sun god. Very ironic, but at least it was dry. Inside, as we waited for the rain to pass a tour group arrived and we overheard some of the description, the original stucco was still to be seen on the walls, with engravings of Paluk and his son, the emerging ruler.

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After only a short wander around, we decided to head to our hotel, and check in early. It was a couple of kilometers from the ruins and we jumped in a rusty old collectivo which cost $40 MX.

Our hotel was at the top of a short drive which revealed a manicured jungle paradise with a few cabanas for sleeping in. I showered and immediately fell asleep. Exhausted. Eddie snoozed in a hammock. It was so relaxing, and just what we both needed after our illnesses and overnight busses.

After a long nap, we got up and wandered down to the restaurant to have some lunch/dinner. We shared fajitas with chicken, and pork with a cinnamon sauce – the local style. We were both still shattered so we went to bed early, two giant double beds awaited us with lovely clean linen. But as I was starting to doze off a buzzing noise started coming from my bed, and I could not locate where it was coming from. So I jumped in with Eddie to escape the invader!