We left Valladolid at 2pm, via the very chaotic bus station. It was too small for the amount of people, which left us crushed and without the information we needed - like where and when was our bus. We asked several times, and in the end simply busted through to the bus parking lot to what we suspected was our bus. We were told it wasn't, then that person changed their minds and said that it was. We boarded and got underway to our connecting stop, Merida. As we'd opted to travel second class, the bus took it's time and stopped a lot. Not a problem for us, but it meant we didn't reach Merida until 6pm.

In Merida, we decided it would be better to have a few hours in the centre, rather than be hanging around in the bus terminal . As it was 1.5km and we had all our stuff with us (there was no left luggage facility that we found), we took a taxi to the centre, and got a drink in one of the restaurants surrounding Merida Parque Grande. The owner overcharged us which meant he forgoed his tip, and we then set up camp in the park. The park was very busy, possibly owing to a stage being set up at one end of it, which then showed some kind of play. In the meantime, we watched a pigeon attempt to land on a woman's head, which was just hilarious, and a mouse scurry around. Later on, the mouse scaled Jayna's rucksack and climbed onto her knee, surprising both of them. Ken borrowed a chap's guitar and busted out a tune in the park. We watched some jugglers and other performers and enjoyed the atmosphere as it got dark.

At 9pm we ventured back to the bus terminal, checked in our luggage, and waited for our bus. At 10pm sharpish, we were underway to our actual destination of Palenque. This was an overnight bus, due to arrive in Palenque at 7am . We'd picked first class for this bus in the hope that it would be suitably comfortable for sleeping in. It wasn't great but it also wasn't terrible. The worst part of the journey was the stops, sometimes randomly, and sometimes to let passengers off. At these, all the lights would be turned on and the driver would shout at all of us to let us know where we were. It was a disturbed night and we've definitely slept better on other buses.

We arrived in Palenque a little before 7am on Saturday 8th. Before leaving the bus terminal, we booked our onward transport to our next stop for the following evening (another overnight bus...). We walked a few hundred metres, found a hostel, and checked in. If we'd had a decent amount of sleep, our intention was to go straight to the Palenque Mayan ruins. We hadn't had enough sleep and felt that we wouldn't enjoy it. This left the choice of going in the afternoon in the heat of the day, or going the following morning, and not being able to shower afterwards . We opted for later in the day, and went to sleep.

After waking, showering and generally feeling a lot less grubby, we walked a few blocks to find a veggie friendly place and grabbed some lunch. We met a lovely Swiss couple and spoke to them for a little while, before heading to the collectivo stop. We took a cheap collectivo the 9km to the Palenque site, bought our park entrance tickets, then our entrance tickets to the ruins, quickly ate an icecream which wasn't allowed into the site, and headed in. Palenque's ruins are numerous yet compact, and again were different from the other sites we've visited. Like other Mayan ruins, only part of the site has been excavated. There were plenty of temples around, some of which we could climb, and a huge palace building that we could clamber around in. One of the most exciting bits was going inside Temple XIII, where we could see a sarcophagus. There were also plenty of carvings around, though many of them looked fake to our eyes . There was only one stelae found at the site. The most shocking thing was only seeing two iguanas on our way around the site! We also visited a pretty waterfall in the surrounding jungle. We had a little over two hours of happy wandering around in the heat before we were being whistled at that the site was closing. We really enjoyed Palenque, it's setting was beautiful and it was incredibly peaceful.

We were content to take a collectivo back to Palenque central, grab some dinner, and head back to our hostel to cool off and relax for the evening. It wasn't until dinner that we realised we hadn't had any coffee during the day, hence our headaches...

On Sunday 9th, we had a quiet morning before heading back to the Palenque ruins to go to the museum. Had we gone the day before, entrance would have been free. However we hadn't given ourselves enough time to do so. We tried it anyway and got into both the national park and the museum for free. The museum was surprisingly good, and contained lots of grave goods from the graves found in Palenque, as well as ceramics, censers (large decorative jars), carvings and a reproduction of a huge sarcophagus found there. We spent almost as long going around the museum as we did going around the ruins!

We went back to Palenque town for coffee and fruit juices, and attempted to get the internet to work. We learned that there was a town-wide problem, which is why we hadn't been able to access it. After whiling away some time, we walked the 500 metres to the bus station and sweated in the heat. We were good and grubby for our overnight bus to the next stop - Mexico City!