I was sure to be up early this morning so I could explore the park/ruins before the temperature started to get too high. I also had to checkout out of my hotel room by 1100 so that was another contributing factor.

I grabbed coffee and water at Don Muchos which is a cool restaurant inside the El Panchan area.

I was initially going to explore the park myself without a guide however as I was waiting for a collectivo (a minivan shuttle) outside the park entrance I was approached by multiple tour guides wanting to take me into the park and show me around (for a price of course). They all commanded a fairly high price of around 600-900 pesos for a 2 hour personal tour which was more than my entire daily budget. After telling a few of them ‘no thanks’, one of them asked if I was interested in joining a group of other people and we could all split the 900 peso price. That sounded like a good deal to me, so he stopped a few collectivos that were on their way into the park and after about 5 minutes of asking, he found a group of 7 other people all in the same collectivo who were interested in splitting the guide cost. Sweet! I also got a free ride into the park with our new guide Fredrico in his car. I got to see first hand some crazy Mexican driving.. haha.. 😆

Lots and lots of photos from the ruins:

I HIGHLY recommend you check out the Mayan ruins in Palenque and I also HIGHLY recommend you get a guide. I learned waayyy more than if I had simply walked around the park.. walking around probably would have been boring after about 10 minutes but with a guide it was very insightful. It was also very affordable after splitting the 900 peso cost amoung 8 people and certainly worth while. Now I’m really looking forward to seeing Tikal in Guatemala!

After catching a collectivo back to El Panchan, I took a quick cold shower and packed up my gear (it was already noon, so I was checking out an hour late) and then grabbed lunch at Don Muchos again. I looked at the map for a bit and decided that Escarcega, MX would be a good town to aim for this afternoon.

It was a mostly uneventful ride down HWY186 into the Yucatan peninsula. The road was in good condition and had a high speed limit, so I made it there by about 1530. I picked a hotel out of my ADVrider hotel book and settled down for the night. Tomorrow would be into Belize!