The Mayan City of Palenque

Palenque Ruins, Chiapas, Mexico

Quite a shock to me how the Mexicans have done up their part of the Mayan world, very touristy and very tacky. Outside at the entrance were tons of mexicans offering themselves as your tour guide for us$60. There were souvenir stalls right inside the mayan site trying to sell you their mayan inspired craft wares, quite sacrilegeious if you ask me. As with all their tourist sites, it only opens at 8am to 4pm, by this time it gets way too hot to walk around, the site was bare and there are hardly any trees sheltering the place. The tourists came in droves, flooding the whole place. It was the Mexican school holidays with many families coming all the way from the major big Mexican cities and noisy kids on their school trips.

Templo de las Inscripciones, the tallest building in the site.

Templo de las Inscripcions, image taken from el Palacio. It was so sweltering hot while I was here, I had to hide in the Palacio complex to recover from the heat.

Typical pyramidal structure of this mayan era. There were many similar like pyramids in the site. Top of the structure is the foliated cross design typical of Palenque.

Grupo Norte. It was like Mayan temple street aligned with stretches of temples. This image was taken from Templo del Conde where Count de Waldeck lived for a few years. This eccentric world traveller and explorer lived here for 13 years, mediating and practising his own version of the lost Altantic spirituality which eventually became the popular new age Mayanism belief. He was living here with his native mistress.

On the side note, Palenque is also the place where the Western travellers come in search of psychotropic mushrooms vendors for their psychedelic induced experiences.

The Monster of Tulum Ruins

Tulum Ruins, Yucatan State, Mexico

Iguanas are everywhere in this Mayan site which sits on top of a cliff overlooking the Caribbean ocean. This monster poses proudly for a few seconds before being frightened by troddles of rowdy tourists on organised tour packages trying to snatch its photo.

It almost feels like a Godzilla movie set at some ancient city.

Here’s the image posted at Mark in his Lonely Planet Blog Article
http://inside-digital.blog.lonelyplanet.com/2009/11/02/holy-cows-step-dogs-other-tourist-animals/

You are in the territory of the Zapatista

As seen on the way to the Miso-Ha Falls in the state of Chiapas, Mexico.

“You are in the territory of the Zapatista,

Strictly prohibit the dealing of arms, consumption of drugs and alcohol, illegal sale of wood. No destruction of nature.

Zapata lives and fights on.

Here it commands the town of Gobierno obedience”.

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) is an armed revolutionary group based in Chiapas, one of the poorest states of Mexico. According to the Lonely Planet Central America guide, they are the cult heroes of Chiapas. In Chiapas where more than one in four people are Maya, the Zapatista claims to fight for their indigenous rights.

The group takes its name from Emiliano Zapata, the anarchist commander of the Liberation Army of the South during the Mexican Revolution, whose forces were colloquially known as the Zapatistas. Somewhat muted politically these days, it was quite interesting to see this signage up where many tourists pass to visit the popular sights of Miso-Ha, Aqua Azul and Aqua Clara Falls.