the biazed blog

We started early that day and it was worth it! We reached Agua Azul (two 20-pesos-roadblocks or "park entrance fees" and some annoying vendors that block the road for selling bananas) earlier than the buses that bring tourists from Palenque and San Cristobal here. We had the cascades for us alone! It's a beautiful creation of nature and really worth a visit, but an hour or so is also sufficient for it. We took some pictures and left the area as the other visitors arrived - muhahaha - and continued straight to Palenque.

Palenque is the town that has on of the three best ancient Maya ruins in Central America. Itself rather boring and unbearingly hot, it provides the infrastructure for the masses of visitors (we're now directly on the maya/gringo route). After a lunch and about a liter of fresh orange juice each, we headed down to the ruins and gave it a shot. And yes, they are really cool! Personally I really liked the fact that one is allowed to climb (most of) them (I'm still angry about the Egyptian police that hindered me from that fun). The archaeological zone is embedded in the jungle and there is a cool river floating besides it (I took a small bath due to the heat!). After two hours or so (we were not really interested in the hair-splitting details), we continued in the air conditioned car (how noble!?) to our next sleep stop.