Oaxaca Family Adventure: Palenque

We traded the crisp, cool mountain air of San Cristobal for hot, muggy jungle humidity of Palenque. Still in the state of Chiapas, these two cities feel and look drastically different. After a long and winding trip down the mountains, we descended into the jungle happy to cease the swirling in our stomachs and delighted to discover a pool at our hotel. We ate at a traditional food restaurant and swam getting settled into our new environment. The next day we saw the ruins of an ancient Mayan city dating from 150 BC - 900 AD. We felt like Indiana Jones--crawling into tombs, wandering through a labyrinth of rooms in the Palace, trying to decode Mayan glyphs, and listening to the symphony of jungle noises. At the end of our tour, we heard a monster-like roar bubbling over the canopy. Then near the temples we were exploring we saw howler monkeys climbing the trees. We were hoping they'd answer their forest friends, but we were happy to just get a closer look. Pen enjoyed making homes for the enormous ants crawling around the tree. And later, while eating lunch at the restaurant named for the howler monkey, El Saraguato, we watched a large rodent animal, the agouti, pilfer a tortilla left for it as the restaurant cat chased lizards up the tree. After more swimming we prepared for an early start to Guatemala.