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[Mexico] Palenque and El Panchan
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morgue
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Nov 15, 2005 13:46 PST
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The road from San Cristobal to Palenque is long and tortuously curved
around the thousands of mountain peaks and hilltops of the Chiapas
highlands. The views were spectacular, and we passed through several
Zapatista-affiliated villages, with their autonomy proudly proclaimed
on roadside signs. They looked desperately poor, even more so than
most of the other villages in the region.
We stopped at some waterfalls en route, which I completely failed to
fully appreciate due to feeling sick from the combination of winding
road, heat, and petrol fumes collecting in the back of the bus. Not
the most pleasant of journeys. (One of the waterfalls was where the
final bit of Predator was filmed, though, so I appreciated that.)
(Random side note: When I was about fifteen, and big into Predator and
Aliens and Terminator and all those sorts of films, I dubbed them in
my head "tech noir" films, named after a nightclub that appears
briefly in Terminator. In a bookshop in Toronto I found a book of
film theory and criticism that did the same thing with an elaborate
academic justification for the name. I'd just thought it sounded
cool.)
Then we reached Palenque, one of the more impressive ruins sites in
the Mesoamerican area. Huge, beautiful pyramids rose from attractive
landscaped grounds while the wild jungle pressed in all around; at one
point I stood on the top of an ancient temple and peered into the
foliage, knowing from the map that there was another huge,
still-uncovered pyramid not twenty metres distant. It was impossible
to see that far. The jungle is thick, and dense, and it feels like if
you stand still for a minute and watch you'll see it growing.
Unusually for me, I fell in with a group that hired a guide for the
site - and if I usually find guides restrictive and tiresome, this one
was something else entirely. He was a believer in the secret
histories of the world, and the first thing he said was that
everything in the books was wrong. His tour consisted of pointing out
tenuous connections to other cultures (Of a Maya-style snake -"That is
a Chinese dragon!" Of a marking that looks like a percentage sign -
"That is the yin-yang symbol!" Of a man depicted in profile - "He is
an Egyptian!" Of something that didnīt look like a menorah - "That
is a Hebrew menorah!") and explaining the mystical importance of the
number 7. ("Seven pillars! And seven steps there, and there five, and
there two - five and two is? Seven! Both are seven!") I
particularly enjoyed him coming to a grand palatial courtyard and
pointing out with a triumphant air the seven steps on the far side of
the court. I didn't have the heart to point out that the other three
sides had six, five and six steps respectively. (Although that adds
to 17, and 1x7 is...7!)
With a bunch of new friends acquired in San Cristobal, I hired a small
cabana in the nearby hamlet of El Panchan. This was an interesting
place - a series of paths through the jungle. Scattered in the green
were several small restaurants, places renting cabanas and hammock
space, even a couple of big umbrellas claiming to be travel agencies
(really just there to pimp their tours to the waterfalls and ruins).
There was even an internet place and, after one long wander through
unbroken jungle, I found a place offering shiatsu massage and crystal
healing. On the inside door of my cabana was a note to the guests,
saying the usual things about when checkout time is, not to wash
clothes in the bathroom, and so forth, accompanied by an extensive
paragraph explaining the neurochemical effects of magic mushrooms and
the accompanying risks. El Panchan is a bit of a secret traveller's
hideaway, and that was the clue to its origins - a place for the
counterculture to seek out new horizons through the mushrooms that
grow wild nearby.
I ordered mushrooms on my pizza that night. They tasted nice. Is it
strange that I had maybe the best pizza I've had since Naples in the
middle of the Mexican jungle?
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