Day 16: Palenque – Tuesday November 23, 2010

The Palenque archeological sites of excavated and uncovered temples was a treat. Victor, our guide was eloquent in his love and knowledge of the golden age of Palenque around the 700s. My excitement was no less than my first visit here 6 years ago even though I am more knowledgeable and prepared now: For example, I know the Maya counting system is on the base of 20 and a bit about the ritual and secular calendars, the rulers, social order, etc. The social order is still a few on the top and the rest on the bottom. The ladies loved it – Carol is in archeological heaven! I took lots of pictures and will post tomorrow after further culling. The wondrous jungle hike took as to a few of the 1,400 uncovered temples that look just as the first explorers saw them. To top it off, I showered under a huge waterfall and felt like Tarzan.

We did too much today to leave the resort for dinner, especially since the restaurant serves excellent food. Tomorrow is going to be a long day starting at 6am and returning just after dark. The sites are in a far more remote, undeveloped tribal area. In fact, we even hired a car & driver and professional guides to make life easier. The ladies want to adventure to the remotest, most hard to get to major sites on this trip like Tikal in Guatemala and Copan in Honduras. They can readily see the famous North Yucatcan sites like Chichen Itza on another trip when Anisa & Julia are likely to fly there via Air Anisa.

Happily, Julia helped me figure out how to move files around to Facebook.