When we set out on this RTW trip, we wanted to travel light. And here we are, 74 days later, 44 pounds lighter in Quetzaltenango (Xela), Guatemala.

44 pounds, you say? What happened to the 44 pounds? Well, we finally found a weigh scale here in Xela, so here’s the breakdown:
– 20 pounds of fat were lost by Mike
– 23 pounds of fat were lost by Ashley
– 1 digital camera-shaped pound was lost by both of us, thanks to a clever pickpocket at the Independence Fair here in Xela. Therefore, we have no pictures for this post… though we’re currently working to remedy that situation. Note: The only pictures we actually lost were the ones of the fair… everything else was backed up.

Now, it’s probably worth noting that our goal for this trip was not necessarily to lose weight. It was to live healthier, happier, and more active lives than we were before. The weight loss is just a happy side effect.

The Diet

Despite cake lady’s best efforts, we’ve been eating almost exclusively healthy, fresh, and local food. We cook about 2/3 of our meals and most of our ingredients come from local mercados, or markets. We don’t stock up on food, either. We prefer to buy fresh produce, bread, and tortillas the day we plan to eat them. We’ve been joking with each other about how we’ve practically become vegetarians… we only eat meat about 3 or 4 meals a week. Otherwise, it’s fresh vegetables, rice, beans, tortillas, pasta, and fruit for us. And Mike loves his cashews (even though they cost twice the price of meat). Despite the title of this section we are not actually on a diet… we still regularly indulge in banana bread, Texas BBQ, tacos, tostadas, and pretty much anything else that looks or smells good to us.

The Active Lifestyle

Our favourite way to get oriented in a new place is to go for a walk. We spend a lot of time each day just walking… to the market in the morning, to the bakery in the evening, to the museums, the parks, or really anywhere else we want to go. The only time we pay for public transit (taxis, buses, or tuk tuks) is if our safety would be in jeopardy, or if the distance is really just too far to go on foot (10k+).

We’re not just losing weight, either, we’re building muscle and developing our cardiovascular systems. For example, when we first got to San Pedro, we were ready to collapse at the school after carrying our backpacks up the hill. By the end of that first day, it was all I could do to lay in bed after all the hills and stairs (of the dozen hotels we checked out with rooms on the top floor). I honestly wasn’t sure if I could even climb the volcano, I felt so out of shape.

Six weeks later, we have climbed the Indian Nose (1800m) and the Volcan San Pedro (3020m), gone on kayaking excursions, and don’t even break a sweat climbing the hill to the market.

I have also started doing pilates most mornings and Mike practices karate now and again.

The Result

In general, we feel better, have more energy, and are enjoying life. Our clothes, which were on the tight side when we left, are way too big for us… wearing a belt is not optional anymore. In fact, I had to cut three inches off my belt just to make it a reasonable length. Currently, we are looking forward to climbing one or more of the volcanoes here in Xela… we might even have another camera by then to take some pictures 🙂

I guess it´s true, travel is good for the waist line.

While we still have lots of posts to come from San Pedro (since we’ve been living here for over a month), we thought we would jump into real time for a moment to share our latest news with you…

We have decided to leave San Pedro (gasp!) and head to Quetzaltenango (better known as Xela, pronounced “shay – la”) NEXT WEEK!

Surprised?  So were we.

Just Sunday, we told our families via Skype that we would be in San Pedro for another month.  On Monday morning, we read about the huge festival and fair in Xela for Independence Day called Feria Centroamericana de Independencia in the newspaper.  At 16:00, I asked my teacher about it since she had lived in Xela for nine months.  Although the festival is two weeks long, she told me the best days are the 13th, 14th, and 15th of September.  At 18:00, I shared all that I had learned with Mike and at 18:30 we had a new plan… finish Spanish classes this week, leave San Pedro on Monday morning and arrive in Xela in time for the festival.

At first we were filled with excitement about the new adventure.  Then, I was surprised to realize, the excitement gave way to anxiety.

Even though we’ve been away from home for two months now, it kind of feels like we’re leaving on our RTW trip all over again.  San Pedro really has become a new home to us.  And, as all you travelers out there would know, leaving home comes with the worries of packing, planning, researching (although we tend to this more in the thick of things rather than ahead of time), and making reservations (especially since the city will be packed for the festival).

All of a sudden, we had too many groceries left to eat and not enough time to see the sights we still want to see in San Pedro (not to mention, climb the Volcano that’s been calling to us since Day One).

There’s an easy solution here, though… after Xela, we’re going to return! At least that’s the plan, we think… who knows what will happen between now and then?

Xela here we come!

6:30 a.m.

Wake up.  Check to see if the water is working.  It’s not.

6:35 a.m.

Mike climbs up on the roof to see what today’s water problem is.  There’s no water in the tank.  The son of the hotel owner is supposed to look after this, but we find it’s easier to take care of it ourselves (well… let’s be honest… for Mike to take care of it).  Mike goes down four flights of stairs to plug in the pump, and we wait for about 20-30 minutes until the tank fills up.

7:00 a.m.

Mike goes back up to the roof to siphon the water through our room’s pipe.  We are lucky enough to have the only pipe that is stuck in the top of the rooftop tank.  The others are properly connected to the bottom.

7:05 a.m.

We take turns showering.  It’s anyone’s guess how warm the water will be today.. anything from lukewarm to steaming hot (if there’s not enough pressure, there’s no hot water at all… but this can easily be fixed by sending Mike up to the roof).  The electric shower head is finicky.  You can adjust the temperature by adjusting the water pressure… the more pressure, the less heat.  It requires precision and skill to get a hot shower, finding the exact level of pressure that will give you the hottest shower without making the electric heating element cut out.  I’ve learned that under no circumstances should you touch it while it’s operating (or bring your razor near it).  Zap.

7:30 a.m.

Mike goes downstairs to make us pancakes for breakfast, while I make the bed and straighten up the room.  I eat the first few hot cakes with New Zealand butter (the only type of butter you can find in all of San Pedro) and syrup, then take over cooking while Mike eats his.  We do dishes together.

8:00 a.m.

Market time!  The only way you can get fresh fruit, veggies, or meat is to go to the market.  It opens at about 8:00 and is usually shut down by noon.  From our hotel, it’s two blocks straight uphill.  We buy a couple slices of piña (pineapple) for 1 queztal each (12.5 cents CAD) and return to our balcony to feast on its sweetness (with only a slight hint of acidity, unlike the green-picked pineapple we get in Canada). We linger on the balcony, enjoying the warm sunshine and views of the lakes and surrounding mountains.

8:30 a.m.

Today is laundry day.  We haul our laundry and our camp soap down to the kitchen and handwash our clothes in the same sink we did our dishes in this morning.  I wash, Mike rinses and wrings, and then I re-wring the clothes so they might actually have a hope of drying before it rains this afternoon.  Then we hang them up amongst the corn plants in the hotel courtyard.  (After four weeks of this process, the hotel owner showed us the secret room that has a washing machine in it.  She lets us use the spin cycle for 5 minutes so the clothes are almost dry before we hang them up).

9:00 a.m.

We return to our balcony and sit on the hammocks to do our Spanish homework.  Inevitably we have a small fight over who should get to use the only Spanish-English dictionary.  For some reason, Mike usually seems to win.  I did most of my homework last night, so I spent about half an hour doing pilates while Mike finishes up.

10:00 a.m.

We lounge about outside, reading, writing, or playing games.  We went to the school yesterday to use the internet, so today we’re just enjoying some free time.

11:00 a.m.

We start thinking about lunch and realize we should have bought something at the market.  I head to the market and buy an avocado, tomatoes, green onions, garlic and lime (sometimes lemon, since they look the same… lemons here can be green, yellow, or orange).  I head back to the hotel, sweating from the heat of the day, the hills, and the four flights of stairs.

12:00 p.m.

Mike and I prepare lunch together.  He heats up some leftover beans from yesterday (we learned an important lesson about how long it takes to cook dried beans our first week here… now we borrow a pressure cooker from the hotel owner and make a big batch for the week).  I make a quick guacamole.  We go buy eight hot, fresh, handmade tortillas for 2 quetzales from the lady next door (so convenient… and they are the best we’ve had anywhere!).  We sit down and enjoy the food together.

1:00 p.m.

More reading or studying.  Mike is memorizing verbs on the flashcards and I am trying to plow through the story of Beauty and the Beast in Spanish (that’s right… my teacher gives me children’s books to read!).

1:45 p.m.

We share a rosca (a delicious hard cookie that is only made for festivals here… they won’t have any more for sale until June), bring our laundry in since it will inevitably rain, then pack up our books, sweaters, and rain jackets and head to school.  Three minutes later, we sit down and check email and Facebook messages on my former iPhone before class starts.

2:00 p.m.

We meet up with our teachers and find a nice cabaña in the garden for classes.  We each have our own teachers – everything is one-on-one instruction here.  For the next four hours, we speak nothing but Spanish (slowly and awkwardly, but nonetheless Spanish).

6:00 p.m.

We walk back to our hotel.  It’s cold, raining, and almost dark.  On the way, we stop at a tienda to buy some pasta and tomato sauce for supper (only 7 quetzales in total).  We avoid the river running down the steep streets, and cook the pasta.

7:00 p.m.

We eat our supper on our balcony since the rain has let up, watching the lights of the other towns surrounding the lake.  There’s a few fireworks above the hills across the lake.  I go downstairs to wash the dishes.

7:30 p.m.

We curl up inside our hotel room and read books, do homework, or otherwise relax.

9:00 p.m.

There is a knock at the door with the familiar call of “Pastel!  Chocolate!”  Cake Lady is here (I knew her name for about 10 minutes, but I’ve forgotten it).  Cake Lady has visited our room every night since we’ve arrived (except Sundays).  Tonight, we can’t resist the smell of the chocolate cake.  She gives us the largest piece in her tupperware tub, we pay her 10 quetzales, and share the cake.

9:30 p.m.

I am starting to fall asleep reading my book in bed (this one’s in English… my head can’t take any more Spanish today).  We brush our teeth.  I put on my long underwear because this night, like the last two, is exceptionally cold.

10:00 p.m.

Zzzzzzz……

 

 

Despite the fact that we left Mexico a little “ruined out” (6 different ruin sites in only two weeks will do that to a person)  we couldn’t pass by Flores without a day trip to the Mayan ruins of Tikal.

Tikal Ruins

We booked a 4 hour English tour (the tour actually lasted 5 hours) from one of the many tour companies in Flores for 110 Q per person plus an additional 15 Q for an open return time.  It included door-to-door transport from our hotel to Tikal and back.  It did not include the entrance fee to Tikal which was a hefty 150 Q per person.  At this time, $1 CAD = 8 Q

Tikal turned out to be well worth the expense, especially the tour guide.  We thought we were going on a sunrise tour, since we were picked up at our hotel at 4:45 am, but by the time we arrived at the gates it was already 6:00 am and the sun was well up.  Our tour group was large (somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30 people), but we weren’t disappointed when it came to animal sightings.

Our guide expertly dug a tarantula out of it’s ground nest and beckoned for me to come over for this lovely photo op:

When your tour guide is holding a tarantula, points at you, and says “come here and open your mouth,” you know what’s coming…

When we heard the distinctive howls of some howler monkeys, he tracked them down with his own calls.  Mike managed to record the actual monkey’s cries:

Howler Monkey

He also spotted spider monkeys, coatimundis, a grey fox, and an emerald toucan, among numerous other flora and fauna.  As much as Mike and I try to be aware of our surroundings, we would have missed out on most of this if it weren’t for our fabulous guide, Luis.

Spider Monkeys

The ruins themselves are worth a mention.  It rained for most of the morning (it is in a rainforest, after all) and the cloudy, misty surroundings were a nice backdrop to see the ruins.

According to Luis, our experience would not be complete without capturing this jumping picture… I think he was right

Luis asked for the guards permission to climb a few of the structures that were off limits to visitors, so I think we got to see a little more of Tikal than the average person (then again, maybe every tour guide tells their group that).

Mike passing over the “Do Not Pass” barricade

One of the steep temples we climbed

When Mike and I finally transitioned from “we should really travel some day” to “we are definitely going to do this thing,” our first step was to break the news to our friends and loved ones. We were a little nervous about telling everyone, because we weren’t sure what their reactions would be. Now, more than a year later, we’re introduced to new people as the couple that quit their jobs to travel the world.  And we’ve pretty much got the reactions figured out:

“So you’re traveling, eh?  That’s…”

1.  “…exciting!” – Most people seem genuinely happy and excited for us when we tell them about our trip plans.  They wish us well and that’s that.

2.  “… incredibly interesting.” – While this response is tied closely to #1, some people are so intrigued that they want to know every detail… Why did we quit our jobs?  Why did we decide to do this?  Was it a hard decision?  Where are we starting?  What’s our itinerary?  Why don’t we have a solid itinerary?  How long will we be gone for?  Will we come back at all? And so on, and so on.  We may not always have the answers, but since travelling is pretty much all that we think about lately, neither of us mind going on and on about the trip.

3. “…something I’ve always wanted to do” – It seems that the majority of the population have considered travelling long term at some point in their lives and many still haven’t given up on their dream.  Having said this, many also seem content to live vicariously through our travels (or at least, so they say).  I’m actually surprised by how many people I meet that have done one-year stints in various countries, and yet don’t consider themselves to have traveled much.  Personally, I think spending a year working in a single foreign country is still traveling – it’s just slow traveling… the best kind!

4.  “… just like my friend/cousin/niece/nephew/daughter/son” – Everyone we talk to knows someone that is currently traveling or has recently traveled for at least a year.  Like #3, most of these travelers have spent a year or more working in a foreign country.  The biggest theme among these travelers?  They all seem to be 18 – 24 years old… which kind of makes me feel old.  Better late than never, I guess!

5. “… scary!” – The prevalence of this reaction kind of took me by surprise.  I had no idea there was so much fear of new places out there.  A lot of people view travel as a series of beach resorts and have a genuine fear of what’s beyond the tourist path.  Whether it’s the latest violence in Mexico to hit the headlines or a story about friends that traveled to Colombia a decade ago and found it too dangerous, there’s no shortage of fear out there.  And we hear all about it.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that there are a lot of scary places out there.  But some of them are in my own neighbourhood… there are areas of Regina that I wouldn’t walk through alone at night, and I’m sure there will be areas of cities or entire regions that it won’t be safe to travel through.  I’m not going to be stupid, but I’m not going to let fear unnecessarily limit my trip either.

6. “…crazy!” – Sometimes people flat out tell us we’re nuts and other times they express it with more subtlety.  Some of the people we know can’t get over the fact that we left our debt-free lives, sold our house and belongings, left our stable careers with pensions, and are traveling this young.  Others think we should be committed for wanting to spend a year or more living out of a backpack and staying in hostels.  Regardless of how “crazy” it might seem for others, this is the right time for Mike and I to travel so we have no regrets.

7.  “… great for your guys.” Hmmm… I could probably use a SarcMark here.  You know… the punctuation mark used to emphasize a sarcastic phrase.  But I’m not sure if it’s Linux compatible.  So, instead, I’ll just point out that this is a sarcastic response.  Sometimes we encounter people who are downright jealous of our plans.  So jealous that they can’t help but point out how not everyone can afford to do what we’re doing and we should consider ourselves lucky.  But luck has nothing to do with it.  We’ve worked for what we’ve got and made conscious decisions to save the necessary money.  Sometimes it’s the little decisions that count… like choosing not to eat out even though we don’t feel like cooking or telling yourself you don’t need that new shirt, DVD, CD, etc.  And traveling doesn’t have to cost a fortune – you can travel to the same city (for example, Cancun… our starting point) and spend a few dollars on accommodation and food or spend several hundred in the same time frame.  I refuse to feel bad about my travel plans and I refuse to admit that we are where we are in our lives because of dumb luck.

8.  “… sad : ( ” This response often comes after the others and, to be fair, was quite expected.  I’d be a little concerned if no one I knew felt a little bit of sadness about my departure for an undetermined length of time.

Regardless of whether the people we know and meet think we’re fascinating, exciting, inspiring, enviable, certifiably nuts, or reckless, the one overwhelming response is support. Whether or not they agree with us and our reasons, our friends and family are incredibly supportive of our plans (or lack thereof).   I truly feel loved and know I have a great group of people to return to.

What do you think of our decision?  Or, if you are traveling or have traveled long term, how did people react to you?

When Mike and I originally booked our flights to Cancun, we thought we would land, hop on a bus to Guatemala, and that would be it for Mexico.  Mexico was never really on our radar… it’s a good thing we decided to stay here a while, because we would have missed out on some great culture and history (not to mention the beaches).

Mexico Summary:

Length of Stay:  22 days
Average  Cost per Day for Two People (excluding transportation to Mexico):  $51.80 CAD
Cities Visited:  6
Distance Traveled:  1735 km in 13 automobiles and 4 boats
Days Sick:  9 for Ashley, 0 for Mike
Number of Items Lost:  2 (Ashley’s hat and Mike’s water bottle)
Biggest Tourist Traps:  Isla Mujeres (especially La Tortugranja), Parador Gastronomico de Cockteleros in Campeche
Exchange Rate:  $1 CAD = 12 MXN (Mexican pesos)

Our Route:

Cancun (Isla Mujeres) – Isla Holbox – Valladolid (Coba, Chichen Itza) – Merida (Uxmal, Kabah) – Campeche (Edzna) – Palenque

Highlights:

• Isla Holbox, without a doubt.  We nearly looked for jobs  just to stay on this  little piece of paradise.
• Whale Shark tour – to be honest, I hadn’t even heard of whale sharks before I got to Cancun.  But this experience was worth the hefty price tag.  The whale sharks were massive and swimming along beside them was an incredible feeling.
• Mayan Ruins – especially Chichen Itza, Edzna, and Palenque
• Fresh corn tortillas – there’s nothing quite like buying a steaming stack of corn tortillas from a tortilleria for 3 pesos

• Discovering the parks/plazas in the cities – these were always the first thing we sought out.  They had the best street food and we could often find free music, dancing, or other entertainment here.
• Mexican pastries for breakfast… we never had the same one twice, and they were all delicious!
• Mexican Tang… a.k.a. Zuko.  This was a cheap way to flavour some of the water we had to stay hydrated with.  There were a billion different fruit flavours and they all tasted like the real fruit (not an artificial fruit drink knockoff like we have in Canada).

Lowlights:

• 8 days straight of Montezuma’s Revenge (a.k.a. traveler’s diarrhea) for Ashley
• The hour long second class bus ride to Coba that Ashley had to stand for since all the seats were full. 

It was almost worth standing to hear a fellow passenger ask why I was standing when my husband was sitting… good question.

• The heat and humidity… it’s just a little too much at times
• Wandering around for an hour and a half at 8:00 a.m. in Campeche looking for a colectivo to Edzna.  We stopped and asked directions every 5 minutes or so, but were always pointed in different directions.  Eventually, we found out that they don’t run until 11:00 on Sundays and were lucky enough to find a shoe shiner that for 10 pesos gladly led us to the super secret back street location.
• Street vendors.  They come to you while you are walking, eating, reading… and their sales pitches are relentless.
• Mosquitoes.  Just about everywhere we were, there were mosquitoes.  And not just a few.  Deet hardly seems to deter them sometimes and heaven forbid you leave an arm hanging out of the sheet while you’re sleeping!

Surprises:

• For two people that never nap, we sure have grown to love them.  In fact, we mastered the art of the siesta in Mexico.  It’s a great way to get out of the heat from about 12 – 3, and keeps you going late at night since most places don’t get lively until about 9:00 pm.
• Parks are a great place for a family to take children to play after dark.  In Canada we would already have our kids in bed, and we’d be afraid of a mugging in a park after dark. Not so in Mexico.
• The pork store, chicken store, fish store, and beef store are all separate stores.
• Apparently we have turned into morning people.  Take away the jobs and the alarm clocks, and we start getting up at 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. on our own.
• You have to throw your toilet paper in the garbage, not the toilet… this one took some getting used to.
• Mexican Coca Cola is actually quite good… much better than what we’re used to!  Apparently it’s made with real sugar, not high fructose corn syrup like the stuff at home.

Lessons Learned:

• It’s possible for two people to share every meal, snack, and drink… and for only one of them to get sick from it.
• We probably should have taken the Spanish CDs more seriously before we left… a little more Spanish would go a long way.
• Unless you’re worried about availability, don’t book more than one night at a hostel until you’ve stayed there.  We thought the hostel in Campeche that was located in a mansion from the 1500’s would have tons of character… it actually had tons of dirt, cockroaches, no drinking water, no door on the dorm, and some sort of large Mexican boy band staying there.  I mention the boy band because they would pull out their guitars about the time we went to bed and sing the same song over and over again into the wee hours of the morning.
• If someone’s being friendly, watch for the sales pitch.  We got caught by this our first night in Merida.  A man came up to us and asked where we’re from and how long we’ve been traveling.  He started telling us the “real” history of Merida and the Spanish conquistadors.  Before we knew it, we were in a store looking at jewelry, carvings, and hammocks.  The merchandise was some of the nicest we’ve seen and we still felt like we had seen something special until we went back to our hostel and met a group of travelers that had fallen for the same ploy the night before.

Mexican Journal

Cancun – 3 Nights
Cancun was our starting point. After an interesting first evening that included hiding out from masked military guys with guns while we waited for our couchsurfing host to arrive at his home, we spent two days checking out the beaches at Isla Mujeres and in the hotel zone. We found Isla Mujeres had nice beaches, but was full of drunk 20 year olds racing golf carts down the streets. The hotel strip kind of reminded us of a beachy vegas. The vendors were pushy, but the beaches themselves were beautiful.

Isla Holbox – 5 Nights
We had heard about Isla Holbox from a guy we met on the airport shuttle in Cancun. Holbox is a small town on the end of the island, with white sand beaches and white sand streets. It didn’t feel super touristy, though there were a lot of tourists about. The culture was dominated by locals, and everything felt very laid back. We decided to relax there for a while we figured out some sort of plan of where to go next. We met Morgan and Andy at the bus station in Cancun, where we shared our mutual ATM woes. They convinced us that we HAD to go swimming with the whale sharks… so we did! The experience was unforgettable and we’re glad we splurged on it. Tribu hostel was an amazing place to stay and we were both sad to leave this island (but not the ferocious mosquitoes) behind.

Valladolid – 2 Nights
Valladolid is a colonial city that we used as a home base for visiting the Coba ruins (about 1 hour away by bus) and Chichen Itza (about 45 minutes away by bus). The city itself was beautiful and we probably could have spent more time here. We explored the Convento San Bernardino de Siena and then cooled down in Cenote Zaci. Swimming in the cenote (sinkhole) was a highlight of our time here. If we returned, we would definitely check out the ruins at Ek’Balam, which are just outside of the city.

Merida – 6 Nights
When we went to Chichen Itza, we were able to bring our backpacks with us and leave them in a luggage room at the entrance.  From there we caught a bus straight to Merida. Merida is another beautiful colonial city. We stayed here much longer than anticipated due to Ashley’s stomach troubles, but never found ourselves tired of the place. Merida has a great market to buy groceries, a main plaza that had something happening every night (including Mayan dancing, street performers, and musicians), streets that close down for restaurants to move outside at night, and a free zoo to check out. The city is full of history and their were numerous buildings and museums to explore. If you are looking for a really nice hammock, you need to check out Merida (though try not to get swindled into paying three times its value, which is common). Our hostel had a pool, which was almost a necessity in the heat. We splurged on a tour to Uxmal and Kabah from our hostel, since we thought we should pay for a guide at some point to get a bit of the history behind the Mayan ruins. The tour was okay, but our tour guide seemed like a bit of swindler and we ended up feeling pressured into paying extra to visit a Mayan shaman (not worth the 50 pesos per person). We also felt rushed at the ruins… though we were happy to hear the stories about the Mayans, we would have appreciated more time to wander and take pictures.

Campeche – 4 Nights
Campeche is yet another colonial city in Mexico. It’s downtown area was walled in to protect it from pirate attacks in the 18th century. Not all of the wall remains, but downtown Campeche has been painstakingly restored and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We visited many museums in this city and learned that a mansion built in the 1500s is not necessarily the best place to stay. Our day trip to Edzna was well worth it for the beautiful ruins.  As a bonus, we got to experience hitchhiking with 7 other people in the back of a pickup truck for the 70 km trip from Edzna back to Campeche.  We spent one more night than planned here because we didn’t book bus tickets to Palenque in advance and the only bus leaving on the day we first wanted to go was sold out.

Palenque – 2 Nights
Palenque was the cheapest place we visited in Mexico. We stayed outside of the town in a cabana in the jungle, and woke to the sound of howler monkeys each morning. We only stayed here long enough to visit the ruins (if you want a cheap tour guide, turn down the guys outside and hire one of the guys inside… the adults charge about 100 pesos per person and the kids charge about 50 pesos). The ruins were some our favourites. You could actually go inside one of the palaces, see various bedrooms, and walk out the other side. Most of the other ruins we’ve been to either forbid you to go inside of them or only have entrances to single rooms. We could have stayed longer, but were anxious to get to Guatemala to learn Spanish. We booked transport through a tour agency in Palenque to take a bus, a boat, and another bus to Flores, Guatemala.

Uxmal

Uxmal

Stop at Mayan Village between Uxmal and Kabah

Kabah

Kabah

Edzna

Edzna

Palenque

Palenque

Palenque

Palenque

Palenque

Want to check out more photos from the Mayan ruins we visited in Mexico?  Check out our photo gallery!