Palenque 2: A Temple City Overgrown by La Jungla

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Archaeology, Regional History, Travel
Palenque Parque Nacional

The highlight of a visit to Palanque is a 15 minute trip out-of-town to the nearby Mayan ruins (Palenque National Park) which dates back to AD 600 or thereabouts. Our minibus unloaded us just past a sign saying: Carreteria a Palenque – Zona Archaeológica. This UNESCO heritage site is what put tiny Palenque on the international tourism map! We met our local guide for the day at the National Park’s entry turnstiles, stacks of people were already visiting the site when we got there around half-nine in the morning (Lonely Planet’s ‘Guessimation’ of over 1,000 visitors to the park on an average day seemed feasible).

The site map

The Palenque archeological site comprises an indeterminate number of temples within what was in its day a large Maya city with a plain on one side, a dense jungle on the other and the Rio Usumacinta running right through the middle of it. Before we hit the temple trail, Rafa our guide, who clearly knew his Mayan archaeology and antiquity, gave us a quick overview of the city using a cloth map affixed to a tent wall for illustration. Apparently Palenque’s original name was Lakamha (Meaning “Big Water”) – don’t think I quite got the significance of this name(?) unless it was a reference to the river which, not particularly noticeable today, may have been more significant in the time of the Maya. Like Teotihuacan on the outskirts of Mexico City, another indigenous civilisation occupied the site, predating the Mayans by maybe the best part of a millennium.

Temple bas-relief
Temple reliefs

Once we started exploring the site Rafa explained that most of what survived of the pyramids, what we could see still, was the work of the 8th century Maya king, K’inich Janaab Pakal, AKA Pakal the Great. Pakal’s long reign oversaw a major building program for the city. Probably the pick of the temples we saw was the one known as the Temple of the Inscriptions…the intact panels of the structure, which Rafa explained the significance of to us, contained important Maya pictorial inscriptions – these are a kind of ideogram, a single picture which equates with a word or an idea or a number. These symbols (adopted from the Olmec people by the Maya) put together formed a text. On the temples some of these glyphs (hieroglyphic characters painted on the walls) survive, although the Spanish Catholics destroyed a lot of them! The unique Mayan numbering system is also in evidence❈.

Temple of the Crosses

We did the obligatory adrenalin-driven thing that tourists do: sprinted up the steps of the nearest pyramid. Once at the top, nothing much to see, we proceeded more cautiously and slowly back down the narrow and slightly crumbling steps (themselves a mosaic of unevenly cut stone squares). It wasn’t permitted however to climb up the Temple of Inscriptions) opposite which some 80 feet above the ground held Pakal’s mausoleum. Rafa showed us some of the practical functions of the temples, for example the plumbing, as well as explaining the religious ones. Palenque is not as high and imposing as Teotihuacan’s “Sun and Moon” pyramids, but loses nothing in the decorative stakes. This is especially evident in the four edifices enclosing the rectangular square of the smaller Temples of the Crosses which boast elaborate, bas-relief carvings and sinewy interior chambers. At certain points Mayan relics lay around the grounds☀.

A city of temples under cover of jungle
We had some free time to spend scaling one or two of the less formidable pyramids before tiring of this novelty. As we followed Rafa back to the entrance, we swiftly and adroitly swerved past lines of souvenir vendors loudly hawking their wares on the pathway. Outside, the group regathered and were shepherded by Rafa towards a nearby trail heading into a denser part of the jungle. I mentioned above that the temples of Palenque were of indeterminate number. The reason for this is that virtually the entire ancient city of Palenque was swallowed up by the jungle some time after the Mayan inhabitants left the area (circa AD 800). What what we could see and explore was the small portion that had been discovered and unearthed to this point!

Rafa blending in to nature – at one with cedars & sapodilla

An ecosystem of diverse biodiversity
Rafa took us deep into a high evergreen forest along a path called Sendero Moiépa, pointing out different aspects of the biodiversity bank. The Palenque National Park was made up of 996 tropical species of flora and fauna…around us were millennium-old trees, red cedar, mahogany, kapok and sapodilla, as well as camedor palms including the threatened fishtail palm xate.

As we trekked along the muddy, sloping trail through ancient streams with fossilised shells, passing vines and unfamiliar plants, Rafa educated us as to the kinds of fauna that the jungle was home to…in all there were 353 species of birds – we caught glimpses of only the relatively easy-to-spot red-crowned parrots, unfortunately the very hard-to-spot toucans with their facility for changing the colour of their beaks to regulate heat were keeping their distance as usual. Another group of residents – the howler monkeys – were audible in full voice though not visible to us (presumably they were dangling high up in the canopy at safe distance but aware of the strange human visitors on the ground). Also not seen were the even more elusive ocelots, nor did we manage to see any of the 71 species of reptiles and amphibians including the very venomous pit viper, the Bothrops asper, which happily in this instance was giving us a welcome wide birth!

The temple, liberated from La Jungla!

After about 30 minutes of hiking we reached our main objective, a peak on top of which the skeletal ruins of a Maya temple was peering out of the jungle. This until recently hidden temple was discovered by local archaeologists. Rafa explained that tests had indicated there were undoubtedly many more temples buried under the jungle still to be unearthed.

Before heading back out of the Palenque jungle, Rafa invited us to explore an underground entrance point largely concealed by a rock ledge. Most of us took the challenge to climb down into the hole which led into a short, very tight and damp tunnel which came out at a shallow stream of water. I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to be looking for in the tunnel, a rare, fossilised Palaeolithic Age Mexican marsupial perhaps…it was too dark to see much of anything in the tunnel in any case!

Human “pack mules” doing the hard yakka…”Aspro, anyone?”

≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖≖
❈ Mayan maths were extremely accurate in calculating the calendar year at 365.2425 days, anticipating the much later European estimate of 365.2522
☀ when the archaeologists dug up Palenque they discovered small objects called censers lying round the Temples of the Crosses in particular. These are mainly brazing bowls made of ceramic used for making Mayan offerings to the gods

Palenque 1: Ambling about Town, Down Merle Green and Beyond

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Archaeology, Regional History, Travel
Big Maya

Towards dusk we reached the township of Palenque, our next stay-over on our journey to the easternmost tip of Mexico. The first thing we noticed in the area known as La Cañada was this giant native figure propped up against a tourism building (Carretera Catazaja Tramo Central Tuxtla). The massive sculpture took on a slightly menacing appearance to me, like someone you’d expect to find engaging in bloodthirsty, ritualistic Mayan human sacrifices.

H. Xibalba
Hotel decoration

Arriving at our lodgings (Hotel Xibalba) we found ourselves assigned to a separate section 100 metres down the road from the main reception area. The architecture of our dwelling was unusual, almost avant-garde, it certainly caught the eye…a small, sandy-coloured, two-level building with an A-frame shape, a design replicated in the shape of the large, outward-facing windows which gave the structure a very airy feel. The doors to each of the sixteen rooms conformed to this sloping pyramid pattern. The grounds surrounding the entrance to the sleeping quarters were tastefully decorated with authentic looking native sculptural pieces. The accommodation annex looked like it was a recent addition to Hotel Xibalba.

That night we acted on Hector’s dinner recommendation, leaving the Xibalba we ambled up Calle Merle Greene❉, past several cantinas and restaurants with picturesque displays of pot-planted flowers under their awnings. Around the bend we came to La Hector’s dining choice for the night. We partook of a nice seafood meal with a bit more Mexican cerveza sampling thrown in. At the end of the dinner while things were winding up, the guy who ran the restaurant, a German expat came over and engaged us in some small talk…he was quite a garrulous character, speaking in fluent English, he seemed very comfortable and relaxed, and exuded an almost a weary air of familiarity about all things Palenque (I surmised that he had been domiciled in Mexico for quite some time). After leaving the restaurant Eric and I slowly inched our way back to the hotel, taking in both the night air of this small town and of course the mandatory ice confectionary at the local “7/11” style store.

The next day my roommate Pétros and I decided to check out the old part of Palenque which wad down the road over a weathered, rusty bridge. This was definitely the poor part of town, as we walked I saw very few international tourists checking out this part of Palenque (too far away from the fancy tourist restaurants perhaps?). The faces we did see in the street were mostly indigenous ones – these are largely Ch’ol people (of Mayan descent)۞.

The shops were uniformly low-brow – no frills discount shops, cheap, grimy eateries and grocery stores. Lonely Planet gives Modern Palenque town very short shrift indeed – “sweaty, humdrum…without much appeal except as a jumping-off point for the ruins” [Mexico: Palenque, www.lonelyplanet.com]. No hyperbole here I’m afraid, compared to the “jawdropping jungle ruins” the town itself has precious little to recommend itself.

Silent Howler

The wilderness of la jungla is palpably close however. On the return walk back to the hotel, crossing the river heavily camouflaged with overgrown vegetation (in reality a barely trickling stream), I half expected to catch, if not a sight, the sound of local howler monkeys emerging from the forest scrounging round for food in the town (it had been reported that deforestation in the area was driving them into the city). Unfortunately none of the Alouatta critters put in an appearance during our walk, couldn’t even hear a murmur of their famous vocalising from far off in the jungle. Nor did we get a glimpse of that other local jungle resident, the jaguar. But the following day we’d be in the Palenque jungle itself, I thought, who knows, maybe we’d be a shot at spotting one of these fabled jaguares – but not too close of course!

Footnote:
Some perhaps less photogenic people are known to have been uncharitably labelled with the disparaging sobriquet of ‘Dishhead’…in La Cañada near the “Big Maya” mega-figure as you head back onto Highway 189, I noticed this modernist style street sculpture in the middle of the roundabout, which (art being open to all manner of individual and idiosyncratic interpretation) I like to call “Head in dish-man”, literally. That’s what it looked like to me anyway!

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❉ our street, so named for famous American artist and archaeologist, Merle Greene Robertson, who developed a technique of “life-size rubbings” which preserved a visual record of much of the Pre-Columbian Maya art in Palenque and elsewhere in Mesoamerica
۞ I didn’t know this statistically at the time of visiting but Palenque is the poorest city in the state of Chiapas. When I came across this snippet later, it clearly tallied with the empirical evidence of what we had observed – the shops generally rundown and grimy, some of the local people were a bit on the scruffy side, the dirt and refuse on the streets

The Road to Palenque: Ocosingo Pit Stop and a Diversion to Agua Azul (or should that be Agua Turquesa?)

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Regional History, Travel

The following morning we said goodbye to Casa Margarita and San Cristóbal and set out in a north-easterly direction for our next base Palenque which is close to the Mexican city eponymously known for its celebrated hot condiment, Tabasco.

Tope

By tope to Palenque
For the journey we “mini-sized” down from a full bus to a mini-van. The 212 kilometre trip on Federal Highway 186/199 took us, with two breaks, well over six hours, and introduced me to a new Spanish word, tope. The road was full of topes! About every 100m or so (it seemed that short a distance anyway!) the driver would bring the mini-van to almost a total halt and then ease it ever so slowly over a speed bump in the road. Some of the topes were in fact giant mounds of pavement! At time-to-time we’d see a highway sign that said ‘Tope’ (with or without a black-on-yellow diagram of three parallel humps), occasionally the sign said ‘reductor de velocidad‘. Either way the warning to motorists was clear, another ridge in the road surface coming up, so slow down again. The ridiculous frequency of the appearance of these topes made for a taxing, tedious slow drive.

Ocosingo, a brief respite from the bump and grind
We covered almost half the distance in this stop-go fashion before, to our great relief, we turned off Highway 186 at Ocosingo for (what time-wise was) brunch. The tour guide choose a little outdoor eatery perched up on a small bluff with a delightful view of the lush and verdant valley. Unfortunately, to put it plainly, the food didn’t come close to matching the view, it was pretty ordinary fare. The eatery was buffet style and every time you went to add something to your plate or get a new course, a little guy who looked like he was running the place would annoyingly rush over and ask what you wanted (I think he was, overzealously, keeping a check in case you snaffled anything additional to what you had requested when placing your order).

Banner site map

We left the gastronomically forgettable Parador Turístico Selva Maya and returned to our tope highway. About three-quarters of the way to Palenque we turned off on a side road to the right and followed the narrow road for two to three kilometres till we reached one of Chiapas State’s top tourist magnets, Agua Azul (Blue Water)…although as my blog heading indicates, the water of the (Xanil) River and its series of waterfalls are distinctly turquoise on colour, suggesting that the attraction much more accurately have been named Agua Turquesa❈.

Cascada las Golandrinas

Cascadas de Agua Azul: waterworks and wall-to-wall tourist stalls
The mini-van dropped us off at the entrance, near all the food outlets selling an array of paper-plated dishes including cocos fritos, empanadas and papas y frijoles. We made our way to the waterfalls’ viewing platform to witness at close hand the sheer volume of water spewing down the mountains from multiple waterfalls◘. The waterfalls here are made up of two sections, the more easterly one was smaller but comprised a series of large steps down which the rushing torrents flowed into the large pool of water at the base. Further down in a narrower stretch of the river the falls’ power had dissipated a bit allowing some locals to wade out with the aid of a rope strung across the water.

Thatched souvenir tienda huts

The topography of the Agua Azul site made viewing of the waterfalls more accessible…visitors are able to ascend up a hill parallel to the contour of the falls and gain different vantage points of the wildly gushing waters. The only drawback to this was that the pathway up was lined by untold number of tourism tienda huts, so on the walk up (and back!) we were pestered by hawkers either flogging their Agua Azul souvenirs or trying to entice us in for a meal – going up and back I became totally proficient at anticipating their predictable pitch and would hop in with a preemptive, firmly spoken No comida! (No meal!) to cut them off!✥

The falls’ steps

I asked two of the Americans on the Intrepid tour, Louisvillians Shirley and Phil, if the tourist hotspot had changed much since they had been there 36 years earlier. Unsurprisingly, over such a gap in time, they said the whole thing had grown exponentially. Most of the development since they had visited involved the vast spread of souvenir and food shops which had occupied only a minute proportion of the Agua Azul site in 1981.

Waterfalls in the jungle

Agua Azul is surrounded by dense jungle terrain, providing a bit of a foretaste of the jungle-engulfed archaeological site we were due to visit at Palenque the following day. When I got tired of taking photos of different points of the waterfalls, I spent the reminder of our two hours at Agua Azul strolling along the edge of the water looking at the riverine botanical features, I found it was the best place to dodge the tiresomely persistent souvenir sellers.

It was a relief to get back on the mini-bus again, but I managed to do so after running the gauntlet through a cordon of more over-zealous hawkers, this time a group of young girls gaily and colourfully attired in indigenous garb who had surrounded our bus and were clamouring for us to buy their local snacks. We settled down on-board for the 70km drive (over yet more topes!) to Palenque and our hotel for the next two nights.

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❈ clearly though with tourism being the name of the game I would readily concede that Agua Blue has a much more romantic and appealing ring than Agua Turquoise!
◘ as impressive as the volume was, I was surprised to discover that the 8.2 magnitude earthquake in September 2017 (only three months before our visit) had adversely affected the course of the river, causing the water level to drop alarmingly
✥ I should admit that my resolve to resist the souvenir buying impulse did fail, resulting in the purchase of three decorative wall pouches…I regretted it immediately as it involved me in a frustrating episode of trying to barter down the local seller, frustrating because she possessed neither a skerrick of English or a calculator!

Chiapas Getabout 2: Chamula Excursion and a Church with Strange, Shamanistic Ways

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Regional History, Travel
Town of San Juan Chamula

Slated down on the tour itinerary for Day 2 at San Cristóbal was an afternoon side trip to Chamula, a regional cabecera (headtown) famous for a most unusual and unorthodox Christian church. Chamula’s location is just over 10 km from the township where we were staying, but given the state of the link road and other contingencies it ended up taking us the best part of an hour’s driving to reach the town.

First-hand encounter with the ‘Conflicto de Chiapas’
The ‘contingencies’ included having to deal with unofficial roadblocks on the highway. Chiapas State is base to the Zapatistas (officially Zapatista Army of National Liberation – EZLN), a small, left-wing political/ militia group resisting the authority of the central government in Mexico*. As we approached the outskirts of Chamula our mini-bus came to a fairly abrupt halt with half-a-dozen or more vehicles banked up in front of us. A group of Zapatistas or their rural trade union affiliates had blocked access into the town, draping banners across the road stating the protesters’ current, specific beef with the unsympathetic government (Hector had earlier warned us of the prospect of this and there had been recent reports in the media of buses being hijacked by the Zapatistas!).

The bus idled for several minutes as we gradually inched our way up to the blockade. The roadblock party looked a bit fierce and daunting to us, like they really meant business, even Hector seemed a bit tense. For several minutes the driver and Hector exchanged words with each other and with the protesters, while we in the back tried to figure out what was going on. As the conversation proceeded, the workers’ sternness dissipated and relations gradually became more cordial…it all ended harmoniously with smiles all round after our driver deposited an indeterminate amount of pesos in the workers’ “contribution fund bucket”. The protesters obviously satisfied themselves that we had exhibited sufficient simpatía (empathy) with their cause as we were permitted to continue through the roadblock without further delay!

=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image.jpg”> Mercado Chamula[/capti
Having made our way safely to the township, we make our way to the zócalo, passing streets lined with souvenir and food stalls. The main square itself was chock-a-block with the usual array of items to entice souvenir hunters. I thought that the way the fruit sellers stacked oranges and other citrus fruits in rows to form a pyramid effect was pretty nifty. We passed through an open gate separating the zócalo from an enclosed forecourt…this forecourt led us to what is the main event in Chamula, Iglesias de San Juan (Church of St John).

http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image-1.jpg”> San Juan Basilica[/caption
San Juan Chamula church: a very loose association with Catholic traditions
We stood round in the courtyard taking photos of San Juan Bautista, by no means a structure monumental in scale but attractive with it’s white facade and green, blue and golden-orange trim. Before we went inside Hector reiterated his earlier message about the required etiquette. Photographs of the interior were a definite no-no! The population of Chumula, being overwhelmingly indigenous (95% Tzotzil Maya people) are devoutly conservative and apparently not even keen on being photographed themselves, let alone their sacred place of worship. Crossing over the church’s threshold and glancing down the nave towards the altar, I could see we were in a very unusual church. There was no pews, at different points local parishioners sat on the floor intoning mantras over lighted candles in shallow bowls. These candles were lit all over the church floorspace, thousands of them. I can see that the rituals being performed were not likely to be recognisably Catholic ones, some of the worshippers were accompanied by shamans and curanderos (indigenous medicine men)✦. Also everywhere on the ground were green branches and leaves of the pine needle tree. My instant impression on seeing such strange interior church decor was to ponder on just how much of a total fire trap this place was!

Stepping my way carefully past the carpet of pine needles and the rows of candles I observed that the icons on display represented a blend between the pre-Conquest Mayan customs and the orthodox traditions of Spanish Catholicism (images of Mayan gods and Catholic saints adorned the walls side-by-side). We noticed that among the reverent icons on display, the eponymous San Juan (St John the Baptist) of course took pride of place in the church. Another curious feature of the interior near the altar was a series of long, draped sheets affixed to the walls and roof forming an inverted V shape.

//www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image-7.jpg”> El Iglesias

[/caption]Iglesias de San Juan, although a startling departure from ecclesiastical orthodoxy, is not unique among churches in the Americas (I recall seeing one or two composite religion churches in Peru), the synthesis of Catholic and indigenous religions, the bending of Catholic traditions to accommodate native belief systems in the Chamula cathedral was as starkly defined as any I could imagine.

A little bit of street art and a lot of identical Chiapas native bird bags
After several minutes of shuffling up and down the nave, I made my exit, as did the others progressively. Outside, we had been allocated about 45 minutes of free time to leisurely explore the square. The markets had been going full-tilt to then but were just about to taper off for the day. Time enough for some rapid gift-buying (six tiendas in a row all selling the same woven carry bags with the identical Mexican Redhead Parrot design!).

.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image-4.jpg”> Peluqueria Estetica + accessories!

After the[/caption]After the presents were taken care of, I had time to veer off the zócalo and explore a nearby side street…what caught my attention in particular in this street were two shop fronts, about 40 metres apart from each other. Both these tiendas were men’s hairdressers coincidently (peluquerias)! Painted on the walls were cute, comical depictions of young Mexicanos dudes with haircuts which were sort of fashionable – though the hair styles looked like they were modelled more on Elvis and 60s rockers than on anything 21st century contemporary! The other hard-to-forget (and less delightful) memory from my free-time roaming was a pitiful sight – a mother and toddler standing in the market, holding captive a pathetically forlorn looking turkey, it’s torso enveloped in a garbage bag and feet tethered with a piece of rope. More sobering Third World realities.

By the time we left Chamula (late afternoon) it was starting to get cooler – a pointer to the town’s highland location (altitude 7,200 feet!) We arrived back at Casa Margarita with time to relax before dinner. I took in the splendid hacienda-like ambience of the hotel’s outdoor central courtyard before venturing out to do some restaurant hunting and catch some of the town’s night-time sights I hadn’t yet discovered – like this modern SC administrative building.

PostScript: Los Mexicanos – making a virtue of symbolic protest, an end in itself?
The episode with the roadblock staged by the pueblos ordinario of Chiapas reinforced for me a peculiarity of the Mexican character I had noticed elsewhere on my travels in this land – rhetoric and ideology aside, the Zapatistas (and the impoverished and aggrieved agrarian workers who support them) know in their heart of hearts that they, with all the will in the world, are NOT going to overthrow the iniquitous national government (as they envisage it to be). But, and this seems to be intrinsically ingrained in the mindset of the Mexican peasantry after centuries of being on the receiving end of high-handed authoritarianism, the people collectively will always make as much noise and commotion as they possibly can to protest any perceived injustice perpetrated by the state…just for the symbolic right to do it, and irrespective of how futile their actions might be in trying to prompt real and profound change in society. It is as if the mere act of protesting itself is a wholly gratifying, as well as a cathartic, experience for the Mexican masses.

I would hasten to add that this trait is by no means peculiar to Mexicans, I have personally observed similar purely symbolic protests in places like Lima in Peru, but I wonder if it might a particularly Hispanic and Latin American characteristic?

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* poor, primarily indigenous, Mexican farmers are the backbone of the Zapatista movement, with the roots of the disharmony traceable back to the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s and the failure from that point on of the historic party of power in Mexico, PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), to deliver on promised land reforms
✦ there was none of the really weird (to foreign Western eyes anyway) goings-on while we were visiting, but I learned later that the church was famously notorious for rituals aimed at ridding families of “malicious spirits”. This often involves the slaughtering of chickens over the candles and the consumption of Coca-Cola and a local ‘moonshine’ known as pox