Palenque

The above picture shows the Temple of Inscriptions, on the left, and the Palace at Palenque. It´s in a wonderful setting, the Sierra de Don Juan, the northernmost limit of the forested hills of Chiapas that look out over the floodplains of the Usumacinta and Grijalva rivers, which wind their way up to the Gulf of Mexico.

We know from the wealth of inscriptions at the site that it was at the height of its powers between 615-782AD. Archaeologists estimate that it supported a population of about 8,000. But this would surprise me, I´m sure it would take a much larger body of people to build so much stuff.

Below is the Temple of the Count, where that nutty old aristocrat lived for two years.
One of the (more or less) unique things about Palenque is the use of painted stucco plaster. Below, if you´re interested, is U Pakal Kínich, who governed the city from 736-742AD.
This is a lovely view over the palace, taken from the Temple of the Cross. While I was sitting there eating a jam doughnut and dreaming of a nice cup of tea it struck me that the landscape in the background looks just like Herefordshire as seen from the Malvern Hills. I don´t know how clear it is in this picture though.
This is a reconstruction of the Palace in the site museum. If you´d never heard of the Mayan civilisation, it would be easy to describe it as ´modernist´. It looks to me like an inner-city technical college built in the 1970s by an "exciting" young architect.
All around the ruins are expanses of lush jungle. This little waterfall was particularly scenic.
What I haven´t mentioned about the Mayans yet, which is important, is that they were a stone-age civilisation that hadn´t invented the wheel and didn´t use pack animals. That means every stone had to be cut with tools made of harder stones (that presumably had been fashioned with even harder stones, and so ad infinitum) and then carried, by hand, from quarry to building site.
I´ve not got much more to say, as I´m not so much feeling sun-kissed than solar sexually assaulted after spending all day prancing about on temples without a hat or sunblock. I´ve also got to be up like a giant lark tomorrow to catch a boat over the border into Guatemala. Hopefully, it´s all arranged and I should be in Flores in less than a day. Unless the fact that I´ve lost my tourist card and am officially an illegial alien causes problems at the Frontera Corozal, in which case I may find myself stuck in a remote jungle outpost. We shall see.