11th April 2015 – San Cristobal de las Casas to Palenque

Today we drive 220 kilometers from San Cristobal to Palenque and we have a tour booked for the afternoon of the Mayan ruins there.ÿ Daun told us yesterday that this road has about 300 topes or speed humps on it, so I decided that I would count them to see if she was right, because that’s more than 1 per kilometer! We drive through many small villages and each village has heaps of topes so perhaps Daun is correct in her estimation. The road is windy and through lovely green hills, not quite what we imagined Mexico to be like. It is very badly pot holed in places, so if it weren’t for the road surface breaking up and the topes it would be a lovely drive.After driving for 1 hour 20 minutes at 9:20 am we have been over 100 topes. We find a lovely morning tea spot with a nice view and by 10:55 we have been over 200 topes. A bit about the topes (topeology) – Some topes are just small concrete ridges in the road and they group these in lots of 10-15 about 1 meter apart, so you can take these with a bit of speed and the car skims over them but you get a vibration right through the car, these are really called vibradors but for my count I didn’t distinguish between the different types of speed humps). Other topes are small rounded concrete humps which we can also drive over with a bit of speed and these tend to be the first type that we drive over to wake us up and get us ready for the bigger ones as quite often we don’t see them. Another type of tope is a flat topped concrete one which has a ramp up and down to about a 1.5 meter flat top some of these can be quite gentle but some we scrape on so we take them in 1st gear. Another type of tope is a wide curve concrete one and some of these can be quite high and we scrape on them or get stuck on them so we take them in 1st gear. Another type of tope is made from round metal half domes stuck right across the road with about 4-8 rows of them offset, these we can take at a bit of speed as they just vibrate the car. Another type of tope is a dirt one which we suspect isn’t official as it happens to coincide with a roadside stall selling fruit and juices. Another type of tope is the bitumen one that is breaking up so we can pick the gap with our wheels and take these at a bit of speed. We stop at the Agua Azul Falls for lunch, which are a series of large cascades over limestone and the water is an amazing aqua colour. This is a popular swimming place for local tourists and today being Saturday it’s packed. We continue on to our hotel and along the road are stalls selling local textiles and people selling fruit & juices. We arrive at our hotel after going over 388 topes which is 1.7 speed humps per kilometer, no wonder it took us so long to do the drive! Our hotel is a large resort in a jungle setting, little animals running around and a lovely pool. We are suppose to be having a tour of the Palenque ruins this afternoon, however the country organizers can’t contact the tour company so 3 cars (Blue B, red car & Shiraz) head off to explore the ruins on our own. The Mayan ruins are set in jungle, we can hear the howler monkeys when we arrive but we can’t see them. These ruins are similar to Tikal however it is easy to see a different building style with hollow temples with worshiping areas as opposed to the solid temples of Tikal. The temples are not as tall as the Tikal temples but just as imposing.