A wet Boxing Day as we journey to Palenque

We had spend christmas eve having a few quiet drinks in a very nice bar/restaurant in a trendy area not far from our hotel.We couldn't get over how busy the centre of town was.  There were lots of families out eating in restaurants or just enjoying the "fresh" night air.  As we were quite weary from our long day and lack of sleep the previous night, we called it an early night.

Boxing Day greeted us with grey skies and as we started our trip to Palenque, the rain began to fall.  As we passed through the small pueblos (villages) we noticed many of them had signs and graffiti supporting the Zapatista Movement.  Our van driver who lived locally pointed out the Zapatista strongholds as we passed through.

It was very noticable that these were very poor villages, with small wooden house, basic school buildings etc.  After a couple of hours of driving down the mountain side, and passing some spectacular scenery we stopped at the popular tourist spot of Agua Azul.  It was interesting to find that we not only had to pay entry to the park, but we were stopped at another roadblock where we had to pay money to the Zapatista Group.

Even though the weather was very miserable, the place was packed with Mexican Tourists on their annual holidays.  It was such a shame that it was wet because the waterfall and blue-green pools were really beautiful and on a good day it would have been great to have a swim there.  After having lunch here we continued onto the town of Palenque.  Certainly a contrast to San Cristobal, there wasn't a lot to see here.  However, we were excited at the prospect of visiting the nearby Mayan Ruins tomorrow.