Jono's Travel Blog

20/12/2010 Apoc-eclipse

What an epic day!

Ill continue in the usual format and start from the beginning of the day and work to the end, but bare with it because today was awesome.

After the 6 hour bus journey that only took us 220km from San Cristobel to Palenque where I slept on the floor of the bus next to the toilet in the isle, it wasn’t surprising that all of us were nackard when we arrived.

There were a bunch of people at the bus station looking for where a hippy gathering was held somewhere near by. It is called rainbow festival and not my type of thing as the people who attend are too hippy like for me giving blessings and giving themselves the o’natural experience, there were a few rainbow festivals in India when I was travelling there too.

Anyways the group of us (7 in total) made our way to the La Panchan area where we looked for some cabanas for the nights here. We found a cheap place called Jungle Palace that had very basic Cabanas backing to a small creek. It was good enough for me because it was only 50 pesos a night each sharing with Edwin and Manu.

We wanted to check out the Palanque ruins today so we put away our stuff and grabbed lunch/breakfast at a restaurant down the road.

Manu and Edwin have Mexican student cards so they we able to enter for free; unfortunately my 4 year old student card did not work for this occasion and I had to pay the 51 pesos entrance fee.

Upon entering the site i again was refused entry because of my camera tripod… this really pisses me off as I can take some amazing shots with it and I still have no idea what is the issue?

Although I was a little agitated the Mayan ruins were very impressive and we wondered around the site for several hours. It was incredibly touristy like every temple, waterfall, ruin, whatever and wherever it is but this was well worth it. At one point I went inside a pitch black ruin only to fall into a excavated grave where I stumbled out covered in mud.

We headed off by collectivo to the town where we went to buy food for the next few days. I went for some Quesadillas at the market that not only were very expensive but tasted like crap… im going to Guatemala in a few days and please… im hoping the food there will be better.

After all our shopping we hopped in a taxi and got back to the cabanas where we started drinking and introducing our different rules of the card game Shithead. Where ever you go in the world people know Shithead, it was a large game with two decks and 8 people playing.

The Swedish girls My and Jennifer said they were arriving this day so Edwin and I went to go look for them; we managed to find them very easily at a bar where we had a few drinks before fatigue hit me hard and I needed to sleep.

I slept for a good 4 hours before the Swedish girls and Edwin woke Manu and me up to pursue their idea to check out the full luna eclipse that only occurs once every 100 years from on top of one of the Mayan structures. A great idea I thought so I got up and drank some beers whilst I got ready.

Manu joined us on the walk there but picked out early because he wasn’t feeling well.

When we saw the first checkpoint the four of us jumped a fence and tucked into the forest where Edwin lead the way by bush bashing, after a while and many flipflips lost and recovered we found the museum and checkpoint. We were able to evade the security guard with a gun and sneak behind the buildings to get back to the road.

It was easy sailing to the entrance of the ruins where their were more guards so we again hopped into the forest to find our way behind the structures and avoid the gurads.

We wondered down a dark path towards the sounds of howling monkeys (that actually sounded like a roaring panther) that really freaked out the girls but Edwin and I managed to convince them that it was an audio tape playing… they believed it.

We followed the trail path for far too long and through the leaves and branches we could already see the eclipse starting. At this point we turned around back to the road where we entered the jungle… The girls were so sure we were headed in the right direction back but luckily we managed to walk out exactly where we needed to be, right beside the Mayan structures. We quickly climbed one to get out of site of the guards who carried flashlights who walked the paths and we lay down watching the shadow of the Earth cover the sun.

It really was incredible… what a thing to do; watching a full lunar eclipse on top of a Mayan temple exactly 2 years before the Mayan Calendar finishes with a good buddy and two Swedish girls.

Guess what happened next… we got caught. L

The guards sat us down and asked for 1000 pesos each but we didn’t have that type of money, all we had collectively was 70 pesos. They checked my pockets and saw that I had a camera but they didn’t want that or my tripod that I was able to get in J.

They threatened us by telling us they would call the police but unfortunately for them the police phone number seemed not to work. During this time the moon was still in full eclipse, it lasted for a good 2 hours

We got off very lightly only giving the security guard at the checkpoint we evaded earlier the 70 pesos we had and we walked away. Pfew!

We reminisced back at the cabanas with a few beers and soon after crashed out.

What a night!