Pakal's Revenge and Evidence It's a Small World

Palenque - Part III

We had originally thought our next move would be catching a bus or combi and going to the waterfalls near Palenque. Then, eventually continuing on through the mountains on the 2nd class bus to Ocosingo...sounds kinda like Ocho Cinco...then to the beautiful colonial city of San Cristobal de las Casas. I kept thinking I wanted to come home with a beautiful hand-crafted wall hanging to hang over the guest bed since we have no headboard. You know, the bed that is only a matrimonial....sorry, future guests!

But, plans change. We ended up feeling a little washed out...you always blame it on the food, but personally, I think it is something airborne we aren't used to. To cover all the bases...maybe it's something airborne that is on the food. We used the day as a rest day and ended up taking a combi into Palenque and checked bus schedules for Merida, San Cristobal, Villahermosa. It's hard to get somewhere when you don't know where you're going. The funny thing is - it's pretty easy to buy a bus ticket and get to Palenque within a 24 hour period. But, it isn't so easy getting out of Palenque. Buses fill up fast leaving out. Walked the 4-5 blocks from the bus station to the Chedraui in Palanque and bought bananas, bread, crackers and nutella butter.


from www.amazon.com

Waiting for a combi we struck up a conversation with a lady. She was waiting on a combi and, ironically, was going to El Panchan as well. On the ride out, she took a couple of copies of a book out of her bag and showed us-----she had just received copies of her recently published book "The Drum Wars - A Modern Maya Story". Carol preceded to tell us that she had lived at El Panchan for the past 8 years. I can't imagine hanging around the place for more than a week or so....wow, much less 8 years!!! She explained that the book was part fiction/part non-fiction about all the craziness and crazy people of El Panchan. But, what really sparked my interest was when she laughingly said that now that the book was published and the "true story" was out, she would most likely be forced to leave El Panchan.
But wait, that's not all. When she found out we were from Merida, she asked if we were aware that Alfonso Morales of Catherwood Travels was the son of Palenque's Don Moises Morales Marquez...Don Muchos....Chato.....all very well-known in the world of Palenque and Maya archeological circles. It's all in the book. I am ordering the book from Amazon, having it shipped to Lorraine and Ken's address, and when they come down this way in March, I will ask them to bring it to me. I was to realize later that Carol Karasik, Author and Alfonso Morales of Merida are both affiliated/connected to the Maya Exploration Center out of Austin, Tx.....what a small world!

 Can't wait to read it. Here's the link for the book - http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+drum+wars

The Next Day -

The next day we ended up deciding to save the remainder of the trip for another walkabout, and work our way back to Merida the best we could. That ended up meaning we caught a bus (really ended up just being a van) to Villahermosa (2 1/2 hrs.) where we caught a bus back to Merida...another 9 hour trip. The only funny thing was that the bus took the same route we traveled in the van, within a few km. of Palenque and actually went through/stopped in the town of Emeliano Zapata - neighboring Palenque. We could have spent a lot less time traveling if we would have taken a short 2nd class ride to EZ and caught first class from there. Oh well, live and learn.

We had not planned on traveling to Villahermosa and regretted that we didn't have the contact information for Baldemar's sister that lives right there in Villahermosa. We would have loved to have met her, visited with her, and taken some pictures to pass on to Baldemar. So, Baldemar back in Texas and Terry and I so close to his sister in Villahermosa...yes, indeed, it can seem like a small world!