Mexico (Part 6) Palenque, Chan-Kah Resort and ready for the ruins!

Posted by sbarrymore

on November 2, 2008M at 6:59 pm

The next morning we were up early and had a sumptuous buffet breakfast. There were only about 10-12 other people in the beautiful open air dining room. Here is a photo of the outside of the dining room:

Outside of the dining room

Inside the dining room-

All you can eat buffet breakfast-cost was about 12 bucks.

The ruins were about 4 miles away and we needed transportation. We were told to just walk down the road and stand on the highway until a little “colectivo” comes by and wave it down.

This is the road from the resort that leads to the highway-

“Colectivos” are vans that run up and down the highway, hold about 9 people, and function as an ad hoc taxi service.

Flagging down a “colectivo” on the side of the highway

You get on and off wherever you want and pay the driver a token fee. In our case, the 4 miles to the ruins cost $1 each (10 pesos). He had about 13 people in his 9 person van with most of them being backpackers, some of whom were carrying bedrolls, tents, etc. Several of them looked pretty spacey. This area seems to be a magnet for backpackers.

When we arrived at the ruins we were approached by a guide service asking if we wanted a private guide in English. Carol said “we’ve come this far, let’s do it right and hire a guide”. Best thing we ever did. For 2 hours ($85 USD), our guide took us through the ruins and painted a vivid picture in our minds of how this Mayan civilization lived …..It was incredible! You will enjoy the photos in the next post.

Next Time-The ruins of Palenque

See my other travel blogs on NewsOk.com:

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