Part 2 Ruins of Yaxchilan and Bonampak; Lacandon Jungle and Lacanja

Where do we begin? We have been so busy filling our days with activities and traveling that we haven't had the time to write in over a week. And what an amazing time it has been, I apologize ahead of time for how long this entry is going to be and the amount of detail I will probably be going into. We write for many reasons- update friends and family on our adventures, share cultural knowledge and experiences, and record our memories for future reminiscing. Don't worry though, there's no way we can talk about what we have been up to and it be boring, so here we go......

Part 2 of our adventure:

We stayed at El Panchan for four nights and really appreciated the hospitality given by the family who operate the many little enterprises. We spent a lot of our time hanging around Don Mucho's restaurant and Chely's juice bar. We met Don Moises, the creator of El Panchan, who took flat cattle ground and began transforming it into a jungle paradise around 50 years ago. Don Moises was also the first tour guide at Palenque and has been involved with much of the excavation process and also has a famous archaeologist, Alfonso Morales, in the family. As his jungle grew so did his family. There are many cabanas in El Panchan and they have been split amongst Don Moises' children who run them independently each with their own restaurant/bar.

We stayed at El Panchan for the lunar eclipse and we spent a good portion of the night chatting with a woman named Carol who runs an organization out of El Panchan called the Maya Exploration Center. She is specializing in the archaeo-astronomy of Palenque and how the structures correlate with equinoxes and the movement of the stars and planets in the night sky. Fascinating woman and her work is equally as interesting.

As the winter solstice sun rose over the horizon Faith and I were well on our way to the next leg of our trip: the ruins of Yaxchilan, Bonampak, and the Lacandon jungle.

We packed all our belongings into the backpacks we were going to be living out of for the next ten days and set off for Yaxchilan. We rode in a van full of sleepy travelers and then took a beautiful boat ride down the Usumacinta River which is a natural border between Mexico and Guatemala. We stomped all over the Yaxchilan site and walked in the pitch black hallways of the temples. There were bats in some of the hallways and they would fly towards you to find a better place to hang upside down as you walked underneath them. Faith and I explored the ruins alone and found a passageway that didn't seem to be as traveled and were rushed by a passing tour guide who pointed out a snake that was hiding in a crevice right above our heads in the dark corridor. He later mentioned that it was venomous and that we had really been in serious danger. We felt very fortunate to have met Kayum Yuk Ma'ash, an elderly Lacandon man who occasionally sells Lacandon wares at El Panchan, who sold Faith a seed necklace (made of platanillo, canastillo and maya kum) that supposedly gives energy and protects you from snakes.

The ruins are rather isolated due to its remoteness, only being accessible by boat, and the wildlife there is more abundant than at other ruins. We saw howler monkeys lazily lounging on branches in the trees and spider monkeys leaped from tree to tree using their long arms and prehensile tails.

After Yaxchilan we were driven to the Bonampak site where the most famous of all Mayan paintings are. The paintings at Bonampak were discovered around 50 years ago and redefined the Maya as the world knew them. Before Bonampak the Maya had been depicted as peaceful astronomers. The murals at Bonampak depict the Maya in a much different manner. There are individuals depicted as being tortured, killed, and enslaved. The royal elite are shown to be pampered and ruling with severe disdain over their captives. A fuller image of the Maya had been created once these murals were discovered and we felt lucky to be able to walk in the three large rooms with these images painted on every inch of the wall.

Near Bonampak is the Lacandon Maya village of Lacanja. It is about a twenty-five minute drive deeper into the jungle on a single dirt road. We stayed in the Lacanja village for the next two nights. We were taken to Lacanja by Martin who is Kayum's nephew and he showed us to our lovely humble cabana near a murmuring jungle stream. Our room was made of wood slats with thatched roof of palm fronds. There was a mosquito net on the windows and between us and the roof. We also had a small patio area with a hammock where Faith and I hung out and watched the birds hunt insects and chickens herd their baby chicks nearby. Dinner was served in their kitchen and was prepared by Martin's wife- quesadillas, beans and rice. After dinner we decided to make some friends with the other visitors and ended up playing two rounds of UNO with a family from Mexico City. We had an exhausting day so we retired for the night soon after around 9:00 p.m., very early for us.

Next morning we woke up, had a cold shower, and ate breakfast again in the kitchen. We then were introduced to Chan Kin Pequeno Sol who would be our guide for the next six hours as we hiked through the Lacandon Jungle. We then set off for the hike, walked through the Lacandon community, saw houses, abarrotes stands, a church, and other cabanas used for tourism. The cleared areas of land were significantly hotter than when we entered the dense jungle. The sun became blocked by all the thick vegetation of ceibas, mahoganies, cedars, and the parasitic vines that suffocate trees and use their trunks for support among other plants. The trail was relatively flat and there were bridges constructed over the streams we crossed. Steps had been carved out of the jungle floor to aid us when there was any steep grade to escalate. We were taken to beautiful trees, streams, cascades, termite nests where Faith and I both ate live termites (tasted minty), were given explanations of which plants were used medicinally or for practical uses such as for roofs, paint, firewood, etc.

We then began going up and up and up and when we reached the peak of our climb there was the top of an ancient Maya temple. We were told that the ruins within this area of the jungle are estimated to be just as large as Bonampak, but remain covered because of the destruction caused by excavation and they value the intact jungle over the discovery of the complete site. We visited two separate temple tops which had their remaining portions buried in dirt with plants and their roots growing on top of them. We were extremely honored to be able to visit these ruins especially knowing how few people have ever been to them since they had been originally abandoned and reclaimed by the jungle. The air was humid and we were perspiring quite profusely, so when we were given the opportunity to splash around in the cascades that flow freely through the jungle we didn't hesitate to get wet. I being adventurous to a fault climbed on any rock or area I could to experience every piece of this natural waterpark. Our Lacandon guide patiently waited as we got our fill of what is essentially a playground in his backyard. Once content we started back on the trail to the community of Lacanja. We loved every minute of this hike and recommend anyone who has that itch for adventure to go and experience this for themselves.

We returned, had dinner and made friends with some travelers who had just arrived for the night- Ben and Nancy. A delightful couple from Colorado, a tenured English professor and his super adventurous wife who plays anthropologist in her free time. We had no idea how much this friendship would blossom, but you will see because we spent about the next week traveling with them far into Guatemala to places we hadn't even planned on going to. That night ended early because of all the hiking and we had to pack up our packs for the next step on our path- Guatemala.