San Cristobal, Palenque and Merida

Its amazing how far we have traveled in the last week, everyday we are either out seeing some incredible part of Mexico or traveling to our next destination. We are in the middle of our second week in Mexico and by early next week we will be heading to Belize! This week we have seen some amazing ruins, staying in the jungle, swam in blue waterfalls, and wish we could share all our stories! But here are a couple of our favorites!
In San Cristobal, after taking a 12 hour night bus, we headed up into an indigenous village. We were able to see how they lived, visit a home and see homemade tortillas prepared, and visit a couple of churches. The Spanish colonized these people in the 1800s and converted them to Catholicism, but the people have since brought back their traditional beliefs and traditions. This has created an incredibly interesting mix of catholic and indigenous practices. The church looked like a Catholic church from the outside, but once you stepped in it was really different. There were no pews, just pine needles all over the ground. People were also sitting on the ground, lighting candles to the gods, drinking alcohol and coke (apparently coke makes you burp out bad spirits), and killing chickens. People were also outside lighting off fire works constantly. Their are over 60 indigenous tribes in the area, and all lead very separate lives from the rest of Mexico.
We saw two more ruin sites this week, Monte Alban , a site near Oaxaca, and Palenque, one of the five major Mayan cities. Monte Alban was inhabited for about 13 centuries but no one knows exactly who lived there. The site was big but nothing in comparison to Palenque. Palenque spreads about 15 km long and only 2 or 3 km is actually restored and revealed. Most of Palenque is still under forestation because it takes about 15 years for one ruin/temple to be revealed. Aside from that what we did see was amazing. Palenque was inhabited by the mayans and the main ruler Pakal ruled for some 69 years. He became ruler when he was 12 and died when he was in his 80s. His tomb was discovered behind this triangle door and had been buried with loads of jewels such as jade. His wife or so they think was found in another temple but she was buried with this red chemical which destroyed her DNA. Archeologist have just discovered the biggest temple of all of Palenque which we were fortunate to see however it is still under forestation, all that can be seen are parts of the wall. It would be interesting to see what Palenque looks like in another 15 years. From all that we were told and saw it seems that Palenque has a lot to offer. If you want to do some more research or just read more about palenque here is a site that is supposed to be good. http://www.mesoweb.com/
Today we went swimming in underground caves. It was so cool, all were beautiful and fairly free from other tourists! Getting there was an adventure as we had about an hour ride in a van and then rode on horse drawn carts on an old railroad site! I just keep thinking, only in Mexico! But it was super nice because it is so hot and humid here! It will be exciting to get to the beach soon!
Lots of love from Mexico!