Up early (7am) as we want to visit the ruins at Palenque early. We have breakfast on the high street, then take a colectivo (basically a mini-bus) to the ruins, which is about a 15 minute drive away from the town of Palenque. We are dropped at the entrance where we buy the ticket (38MXP) and enter the ancient Mayan site.

Palenque, Mexico

Palenque, view from top of pyramid

The Maya first settled here around 100BC and the city reached its peak between AD 600 and 800 when it served as the Mayan regional capital. By the early 10th century it fell into decline and soon after was abandoned to be subsequently taken over by the ever encroaching jungle.

We enter the Palenque site and wander through a section of jungle before entering a huge cleared area where the main site is, this area contains the two most important buildings; the Temple of the Inscriptions and the Royal Palace.

Palenque, Temple Of Inscriptions

The Temple of the Inscriptions is a large pyramid construction which contains the tomb of one of the cities most important rulers, Kinich Janaab Pakal (also known as Pacal the Great). We saw a reconstruction of this pyramid in the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City.

The pyramid is constructed of eight steps, and the actual Temple of Inscriptions sits on top of this pyramid.

Palenque, Royal Palace

We then wandered around the Royal Palace which is a large building built on a platform, it also contains a tall tower which is believed to have been used for astronomical purposes.

Palenque, Temple of the Cross

Next we crossed over the stream that runs through the site to reach the next group of buildings, a set of 3 temples, the biggest of which is called the Temple of the Cross. We climbed to the top of all these temples to get excellent views of the Palenque site and the surrounding jungle.

Palenque, Mayan Script

We then decided to walk up a small path into the jungle (it was not signposted and was not on our map) which led to some recently excavated ruins. At this point we caught up with a huge German group of tourists and we ended up following each other around the ruins, one of which contained some impressive stone carvings with Mayan Script (represented by glyphs).

We then walked out of the jungle back into the main site and followed the path along the stream to the ball court (where the ball game was played) and more ruins hidden in the jungle.

Palenque, Ball Court

We then followed the stream through the site and past more ruins and some impressive waterfalls through the jungle to reach the exit at the main road, we had spent about 4 hours looking around the site!

We then looked around the museum for a while before catching the collectivo back to town. We then had lunch, a very nice pasta dish, at a restaurant on the main square.

After a rest at the hotel (it was very hot and humid) we bought a bus ticket to Merida, surfed the internet for a while then had dinner at the same restaurant as lunch (everywhere else was closed).