Mexico(part 1)-A trip to Chiapas, Tabasco, & the Mayan ruins of Palenque

Posted by sbarrymore

on September 12, 2008M at 10:15 pm

This will start a series of blogs about a recent trip my wife Carol, and I took to the Mayan ruins of Palenque in the state of Chiapas, Mexico which we combined with a week of Spanish school in the picturesque town of San Cristóbal de las Casas in the southern Mexican mountains.

The state of Chiapas is the southermost state in Mexico and shares the border with Guatemala. It is known as the “Mayan Route” because so many people visit the many Mayan sites that run all the way up through the Yucatan.

Carol was anticipating a nice leisurely plane ride, being picked up by a driver to be driven between towns, taxis, etc…….WRONG!…This would be a trip of planes, buses, catching colectivo vans along the highway and washing our clothes by hand along the way. My motto: “travel light and quick”.

“He who would travel happily must travel light.”
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944)

So grab your backpack and let’s go to Mexico!!

The trip started out from OKC with only carry-on luggage on American Airlines connecting in Mexico City to Mexicana airlines for a flight to Villahermosa in the state of Tabasco where we were to catch a bus to Palenque in Chiapas for a couple of days, then another bus to San Cristóbal to spend 5 days.

Things could not have gone worse starting with a mechanical delay in OKC and having to switch to the next flight, making it to DFW only to have that flight leave late, causing us to miss our connection in Mexico City. We had to traverse the airport in Mexico City 3 times between Aeromexico, Mexicana, and American Airlines trying to get a flight to make it to Villahermosa to catch a bus to Palenque. We were told all flights out of Mexico City were sold out for the rest of the day. Mexicana told us we would have no chance of getting out on either of their last two flights of the day, even on standby.

A very long story in short is that we pleaded(ok, begged), half in Spanish and half in English, with the Mexicana gate agent to get us on a flight so we could get to Villahermosa that night in order to catch a bus to Palenque. At the last minute she gave us two seats and we were on the plane, but absolutely exhausted from the ordeal in the airport.

Next-The flight to Villahermosa and a stranger on the plane offers us a ride–

See my other travel blogs on NewsOk.com:

Colombia:http://blog.newsok.com/thewanderer/category/colombia/ Mexico:http://blog.newsok.com/thewanderer/category/mexico/