Palenque : Return To The Dusty Streets

It began with an early morning packup (surprise surprise) and a collectivo ride to the Guatemala border hut we passed coming in. least we knew what to expect this time round. the problem came when we crossed the river and hit the mexicann side of things, it seems they didn't expect anyone and we were told that the inspections officer was "out of the office" and would not be back today, not the kinda news you wanna hear when you need a passport stamp to exit the country, and you don't speak much Spanish.

Long story short we spent the better half of the whole day trekking into Palenque, and then being told we now had to pay another driver to take us to an outskirt imigrations office. we did this, only to be told ....."the officer is out for the day" again, i was ready to lose it. 1.5hrs later an 18 year old chico walks into the office with plain clothes and proceeds ..... to stamp our passports. we laughed and headed to the hotel, sorting ourselves out for the day trip to Merida and Chichen Itza.

I've included a few shots of the Palenque town centre just to give a rough idea of the feel of the place. we didn't stay in the centre of town, rather about a 5min taxi ride into an outskirt district called "La Canada". as mentioned before this was a 2 road strip perched around jungle, purely hotels and eating locales. really nice and quite, without being a rural location such as El Panchan.