Sam And Saundra's Year Long Adventure - Part 58

Sam And Saundra’s Year Long Adventure – Part 58

Mexico 

2/28/09  - Palenque - Hotel Nututun’s Parking Lot

This was a big travel day – 302 miles with an estimate of about 9 hours of drive time. We get up early and we are ready to take off on time.  We go through glorietta after glorietta. Past lagoons supposedly full of manatees. We get so close to Belize, that if we would have exited one street further on a glorietta, we could have claimed entering another country.  I’m not sure they would have approved of us without a visa, so …

Howling Monkey

Close up - 10X

We actually could see ruins from the road.  We did not stop even though they were mentioned on our road map. They are quite small.  Goats, tended by goat-herders, graze the sides of the roads.  Lots of cattle with their side-kick egrets. We lose the ‘island tropical feel’ and enter the ‘jungle, hilly feel’.  We go through Xpujil and follow the signs to Escarcega.  The area is still marshy. We travel through the pretty poor looking village of Constitucion.  The town of El Centario is larger, but still has mostly dirt roads, even to the nicer looking homes. We cross several rough bridges, that causes much trailer bouncing and stop to pay at several tolls.  We enter the State of Chiapas.  We crawl across topes and vibradores, and creep under new pedestrian bridges (great way to save lives).  We veer right at the Mayan Head and left at the monument dedicated to the Indian Mother (La Madre Chol).  The wagon master does not see the obscured hotel sign and goes on a ‘teacup’ ride of their own, with some of the wagon following.  Lucky us, we were far enough back in the pack that someone spotted the turn and we drop way down into the Nututun Hotel parking lot.  Unfortunately it was full and we had to park in a back grassy field that included a kids park and playground.  It took a while to get settled for the night.  The wagon master and rest of the caravan straggled in with tales of the narrow, windy, mountainous detour they followed, before finding a way to turn those big rigs around. When we did get set up, we ate and went to bed.  Although we were tired, we heard a ruckus over at the parking lot, but it did not seem threatening, so we slept.