Today is Monday, which means it was more than a week ago that I left Oaxaca City with Andrea. After Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapa del Corzo, and San Cristobal, we wrangled our way onto yet another bus and began to ride north to Palenque. We paid a bit extra for the service, but we stopped twice during the 5 hour journey. The first stopping point we came to was Agua Azul, a series of large blue pools and dramatic cascades among dense, mountainous jungle. We spotted the aqua pools through the trees and I thought, "Wow, this was totally worth the extra $5." But then we began to climb, and more pools became visible. The water was bluer, then greener, the cascades higher and stronger. It was incomparable to anything I had ever seen before.
Yes, the sides of the trail were crowded with food and souvenir vendors, but nothing could distract from the beauty of the water. Even seriously horrible translation work (one sign said "Dangerous Notto Swim") could not dampen my spirits. One thing that did stick with me, other than the beauty, was the large quanitity of EZLN/Zapatista t-shirts, backpacks, and other stuff. The sight really solidified my opinion that Marcos is as much of pop culture icon as Che, and such t-shirt stardom distracts from what those men really represent. (Still, I love my Che tee.)After Agua Azul, we got back on the bus and headed to Misol-Ha, another waterfall closer to Palenque. In the rainy season, I'm sure the 45 meter aquatic drop would seem quite dramatic, but the streams raining down from above lacked the awe inspiring power of the previous rest-stop. The best part of the stop at Misol-Ha was that I found a man with a large knife to cut open the coconut I had purchased at Agua Azul (There was a restaurant with a fullt stocked kitchen, so my savior was no random machete-wielding fellow, although it would make a better story.)
Our arrival in Palenque was dampened by the bus driver's refusal to drop us off where we had agreed, which resulted in our having to wait by the side of the road for 20 minutes, sweaty, guarding backpacks, and weary from a long day of travels. After a bitter, maldicion sprinkled discussion with the bus driver (in Spanish, with Andrea backing me up in English) we got to where we wanted to be. The driver's disregard for our agreement with the agency, our safety, and our comfort will certainly be included in the next update emailed to the Lonely Planet guidebook company.
But ANYway, we arrived in Palenque town, found ourselves a nice hotel room for $8 each, and spent the night eating fresh baked bread and chatting. The next morning, we toured the ruins, which were great, but more crowded than I expected. The jungle had really reclaimed many of the structures, but some fantastic restoration had been completed and the contrast of the dark gray stone and the bright green grass was astounding. However, the perfectly manicured lawn in the central area of the ruins made it a bit difficult to imagine the area as it was during Palenque's golden era. The pyramids did not tower like those in Teotihuacan, I was not blown away by the engineering feat of something like flattening a hilltop (Monte Alban), but Palenque has a different kind of charm. The jungle, the sounds of the howler monkeys high above the temples, the roof combs that appear like misplaced pagodas atop Mayan temples... there was just something about it that, as I look back on that day, makes me smile and feel like I saw something really special.
I spent that night in the hippie hangout of El Panchan, right outside the Palenque ruins park, but still 4.5km outside Palenque town. Andrea had already left to return to Tehuacan, so I was on my own. And on my own I was! I had a whole 6-bed dorm to myself, and silently appreciated the multi-lingual paintings of "peace" that decorated the walls. I read. I wrote. I ate more bread. It was perfect.
Early Friday morning (6am), I got on a minibus to start the journey to Tikal, Guatemala. The first leg of the journey was to the Mexican/Guatemalan border. We then crossed the border on a small boat, traveling about 25km downstream. After that, another minibus took us over unpaved roads for 2 hours. We finally hit tarmac, and promptly got a flat tire. Miraculously, all was well again in less than 15 minutes, and we arrived in Santa Elena, the mainland counterpart to Flores, Guatemala, about 2 hours later. The whole bus load of tourists (about 12 of us) needed an ATM, so we hunted for that. After striking out at a broken machine and one in the middle of a half-hour money change, we found a gas station with an ATM and got the Guatemalan Quetzales that we all so badly needed. From Santa Elena, we drove across a small bridge to the island of Flores, in a large lake of blue water.
Flores is a tourist town, but the island is so small you can walk the whole thing in about 25 minutes. It's charming with lakeside cafes and hotels, small hostels, and good people working everywhere. I befriended a Dutchman named Tom with whom I hunted for a good hostel. We paid Q25 each (about $3) for a dorm at Hostal Doña Goya and enjoyed a hot meal for the first time all day at a lakeside restaurant named La Villa de Chef. The sunset was one the those that kept appearing to be at its peak, only to continue to light the sky redder with each passing moment.The next day, we headed to El Remate, a small town on the other side of the lake, about halfway between Flores and the Tikal ruins. We were dually warned about crowds at Tikal, so Tom and I both thought it best to avoid the crowds and arrive at the park when the doors open at 6am. Not wanting to awake too, too early, beginning the road to Tikal from El Remate just seemed logical, as it cut the travel time in half. Little did we know that the town had it's own charm with which to romance us. Touristy, but more subdued than Flores, El Remate is a spread out village of maybe a couple hundred local folks -- most of whom must have businesses in Flores or Santa Elena with which they support their families. There was little agriculture or other evidence of subsistence existence, just a couple snack shops, three soccer fields, and then about a dozen small hotels and restaurants. Spread out on the shores of the lake, the town was most notable for the number of piers from which you can dive into the Caribbean-colored water. Horses relaxed near the waters edge in some areas, making for spectacular silhouettes come sundown. That night we went to the town fair and road the ferris wheel. The spectacle of foreigners on the big wheel attracted crowds of spectators. I had never before seen so many people stand to watch a wheel go around and around. But it appeared well constrcuted and maintained, although it was powered by nothing more than a large piece of farm equipment. We spun rapidly, but without so much as a shake or rattle. It was a great ride. My hotel room that night cost $4.
Finally, Sunday morning, I reached Tikal ruins. It was foggy and cool and entirely void of tourists. I saw all the major ruins before the crowds arrived around noon, and I marveled at the massive pyramids under the cool shade of towering ceibos and other jungle vegetation. My first impression of Tikal was good, but not great. I expected monkeys crawling on the ruins, toucans scattered among the leaves above, and parrots calling out for crackers from hidden shadows in the forest. This was not the case. But as I readjusted my perspective and began to look at Tikal as a sprawling, jungle of limestone buildings set in an even more sprawling jungle of trees and plants, I began to feel the awe that I had expected. From high above Temple IV, I could see the tops of all the trees, and the tops of several pyramids towering over that. I saw parrots and heard the call of several howler monkeys. But it was not until Temple V, pictured at the right, that I fell in love with Tikal. (That's me on the stairs.) The symmetry of the stairs, the rounded corners, and the steep, steep angle at which it was all put together set it apart from not only everything else at Tikal, but all the other Mayan and Aztec sites I have seen. The view from the top was tremendous, and I finally got a glimpse (a long one, too) of a howler mom carrying her baby from treetop to treetop. The miracles of nature and those of mankind spread out before me in harmony, and as I look back on it, I feel more certain than ever that the search for "small wonders" has motivated humans for as long as we have walked the earth.
