Mexico - Day Eight: Palenque

The Palace

 The night was calm except for some animal making a hard breathing sound in half-light... then nothing.  I must have dozed back off because all of a sudden it’s light.  There’s just time for an omelet on the terrace restaurant and I’m off to the ruins.

Victor, and an ancestor

Once again I’m lucky.  When the taxi pulls up to the entrance, the guide waiting is another Jorge, this one named Victor.  (He knows Jorge in Uxmal, just as Jorge knew Jaime in Chichén Itzá.)  Victor is 69, has been here since 1965, learned English from movies and learned all about the ruins from working since childhood with the archaeologists who preceded the tourists.  Sound familiar?  I’ve already paid 38 pesos ($2) entrance to the site area and will pay 75 pesos ($4) for the entrance ticket, good all day.  Victor will cost me 950 pesos ($50) for 1½ hours... even though he only let’s me go four hours later, so I definitely get my money’s worth!
       During those four hours, I’ll learn much about the Maya here in Palenque.  Chiefly that everything written in the books is wrong, according to Victor.  He points out all the symbols and images from other continents:  a menorah from Israel, a Buddha from India, clothing from Egypt, dragons from China... and as all this was built well before Columbus, the Vikings or the Conquistadors arrived, to him it’s proof of... well, that somehow those cultures came here... including perhaps King Tut.
       But first the explanation of the origin of the word Maya, which I got already in Yucatán... I believe from Luis.  Or Jorge.  Or Jaime.  Or Ana.  When the Conquistadors did arrive, they asked the natives in Spanish, “What is this place?”  To which the natives replied “Majuk” (pronounced my-yook), which means “I don’t understand”.  So the Spaniards dubbed both them and the place Maya.

Temple of the Inscriptions, with tomb of Pakal inside

       Also according to Victor, the dates of 2 BCE are wrong because a skeleton has been dated to 1,000 BCE and another in a pyramid to 3,300 BCE.  Another “mistake” - this one confirmed by DNA tests on a skeleton sent to Canada - is that the Red Queen, whose Temple we see, is, in fact, a man.  Yet another anomaly is that inside the Pakal Pyramid, aka the Temple of Inscriptions, archaeologists dug down and discovered the only sarcophagus ever found in Mesoamerica, that of King Pakal himself, whose reign lasted 70 years*. As a city-state, Palenque endured from 200 BCE to the 10th c AD, with its peak under Pakal in the 7th c AD.
       Throughout the visit, Victor points out things in multiples of seven, the sacred number for Palenque, just as nine was for Chichén Itzá and three for Uxmal.  And to back up his pan-world views, he points out an Egyptian ankh on one facade, the rounded arches à la Taj Mahal on another building, sandals like those worn by the pharaoh Ramses...  I can’t help but wonder if it’s not just the human artistic desire to create something different from the surrounding norm.

One of the Cautivos (Captives)

       Victor brings to life one courtyard used for orgies, where the important men sat around and chose which naked dancing girl they wanted to have sex with that night.  Another kind of sport from the pelota court nearby.  This courtyard also is decorated with frescoes of the “Captives”, although there’s some discussion whether they really were captive or not.
       The pelota court here has a refinement the others didn’t have because the others were for the priests and rulers only, but this one was for the people.  Victor has me sit down on the various levels of seating, each one with different dimensions.  On the top one, my back rests against the riser behind me; that’s the one for grandparents, so they can rest their weary bones.  The next one down has deeper seating; no backrest here for the parents.  The bottom level isn’t as high and not as deep; it’s for the short, small children.  This is the Maya equivalent of those comfy seats in today’s movie theaters.

     “Are you interested in more?” asks Victor.  Very much so.  And we head up a hill, past a young man painting small Maya designs to be sold to the tourists.  Up on the rise there are four buildings facing a central plaza.  Only one of them has been restored, and only partially.  It’s the Temple of the Sun, its steep steps and some of the foundations cleaned off but grass covering the corners.  Across from it, mostly covered by vegetation, is the Temple of the Moon which awaits the loving care of the archaeologists.
       Somewhere near the start of the tour, we picked up Rita, an archaeology buff from Hungary equipped with a backpack of water delivered through an ingenious sucking tube.  Her friends back home had told her about Victor, and as he’s the only grey-haired guide... She asks a few questions and he adopts her, which is fine with me.  She promises to e-mail me some of her photos (which she does).  As I depart after four hours, my feet tired and me hot, I leave the two of them together.  She’s planning to spend four more hours there; I suspect they’ll spend them together, in the rest of the three dozen buildings excavated (out of about 1,500).
       One disappointment:  the site’s museum is closed today.

Ceiba tree

Back at the hotel, it’s a salad of shrimp and mango for lunch, followed by a cantaloupe filled with vanilla ice cream, followed by a shower and a rest.  I take a walk around the property, past a lofty cieba tree, the sacred tree of the Maya.  Its tall trunk represents life, its widespread boughs the heavens and underground - at least partially - its roots are the underworld.  It’s very different from all the other trees growing in this part of Mexico.  I follow the resort’s small stream as it winds past the bungalows; everyone’s either at the ruins or the pool.  Among the trees roam two mangey cats as well as a black cerreque (agouti, a Mesoamerican guinea pig-like rodent) like the one I saw this morning, but no howler monkeys.  (I never do get a glimpse of them; they seem to have moved elsewhere.)
       A swim in the pool and it’s time for dinner.  One of their specialties here is camarones - shrimp from the Gulf that Rodrigo and I passed on our trip down.  That’s all I eat here, in one form or another, because I love them.  Tonight’s are camarones con coco - shrimp literally breaded in fresh grated coconut.  A full dozen of them, which I valiantly finish, accompanied by rice (which I leave) and two of those little bacon-wrapped veggie spear packets.  Good thing I walked and sweat off some calories today!
       Now it’s back to my bed, on sore legs, to read and sleep.

* For more on Pakal and his sarcophagus:  http://www.highonadventure.com/hoa16jan/vicki/palenque.htm