Palenque, Ancient Mayan Ruins in Mexico

We had a great time in Palenque, but truthfully Angel was more interested in the lizards and the waterfalls than the Ruins. They can be quite dangerous climbing on them with all the pushy tourists. Still we enjoyed them very much but she was very disappointed that we could not climb the main temple, it is not accessible anymore due to too many tourists causing errosion and such. This was a big deal as I had told we would, because I had climbed in 1990 and they were working in it in 2000 so I thought it would be ready...so that put a bit of a sour note on our day.

Nevertheless, it was great fun exploring the jungle atmosphere and it was so hot, humid and lush.


After we climbed a few temples, it was very hot, so we took a refreshing walk thru the cool jungle path to the waterfalls and relaxed on the swinging bridge.

Careful here, some tourists were quite rude and nearly bounced us off. I know that next time we will definitely go in the afternoon, as many tourist buses arrive early in the morning and it's very crowded in certain areas.

We did have alot of fun looking at all the intricate Maya designs on the buildings and I explained about the Maya and how they discovered zero. We talked about how the temples looked before, how colourful they were and all the beautiful clothing the people wore with feathered headresses, we talked about what the  markets would have been like and how lively it would have been.

We talked about astronomy and how advanced the Mayan were in studying the stars and creating calendars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_civilization

We discussed how the ruins were all covered with dirt and how anthropologists dug the temples out and how hard it was because the jungle keeps trying to reclaim it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palenque

We talked about corn and how it was once just grass and thru horticulture it became the corn we know and that because of it there was great wealth and that is how the temples were created. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize

We talked about alot of wonderful things. We could hear the howler monkeys and parrots making all sorts of noises in the jungle.

It really is an incredibly rich valuable educational experience for a child to travel to a place such as Palenque and while she may not remember it the same as I did, I know it impacted her and she will benefit greatly from it later in life.

We didn't see any howler monkeys, but we heard them, this is not our video but I thought I share it.



Courtesy of Gersendeconure's Youtube Channel