The Ruins of Palenque & the Curse of the Maya

Laura and I were leaning away from making the 7+ hour bus trip from Veracruz down to Chiapas to see the ruins of Palenque. It was a considerable distance out of our way, and time was limited, plus there was the curse.

Palenque is, you see, where my parents had a fight and broke up on their first trip together. (The got back together, by sheer chance, when they checked into the same hotel weeks later in Merida. Thanks to the gods they did, otherwise there may have been no Jesse to write these blogs for you.) As this is my first trip with Laura, and my parents like her a lot, they warned me against Palenque. But, there we were in Veracruz, earlier than we planned, so we decided to go for it, curse be damned.

We had a couple of small fights there; nothing to write home about, despite the fact that I am; so the curse has apparently worn off in the intervening thirty-some years. The ruins themselves have not noticed those years, of course, aside from an increase in the number of visitors. Here are some photos I took, which I suspect, with a few notable exceptions, will look very familiar to Joan and Bill Keller. What may not look familiar is the Puebla of Palenque, which has become a backpacker town like so many others - it could be Siem Reap, or Khaosan Road, or Pokhara. But this is a subject I indend to blog at a later date, in greater depth. Anyway, here are the photos: