Palenque Pyramids - Day 10

October 26

We went to the jungle. We heard the howler monkeys in the trees. We found a monkey swing. It was fun. We went into tunnels.
I talked to the parrot. The parrot is cute. He is sad and I am sad because we left. Elena is saying the states of Mexico.
- Augustus




We went in to church but nobody was there. Asking the guard we found it was brand new and not in use yet so we asked about where church was and got an address. After some time we found the address and discovered they had discontinued using that place. Probably they had planned to use the new place and gave up the old place but could not move in on schedule so they were meeting in some member’s house for a short while. Addresses are hard to find, we asked several places along the main commercial street and nobody knew what number their place was. Only a few knew that numbers even existed for houses.



The kids, mainly Gusty, were entertained by the parrot. They also had peacock, goats, dogs, cats, turtles. It was a pleasant place with a swimming pool, a large gazebo, about 30 feet across with a thatched roof supported by steel pipe and an excellent concrete floor. Yesterday we did laundry but it was not very dry so we tried to air dry it and failed. The air is so humid nothing dries. The houses are painted bright colors, Edwin says they are tropical, Naomi says they are beautiful, Edwin says they will not go in Aragon, Naomi settled for a single closet. Deep blue floor, yellow, almost chartreuse/pink/orange walls deep orange and yellow orange walls with white tile radiating from the center in 4 rows; plants of all kinds, mostly unknown and mostly ornamental.




Virginia was queasy early in the morning but she perked up and we visited the Palenque ruin in the afternoon. It was the highlight of the ruin tour, impressive for its size and diversity and setting in the dense jungle. They have a great museum and visitors center with lots of literature to buy and artifacts to see. It seems to be pretty well interpreted, to the point of knowing the name of the last major ruler, Pakal. He lived 83 years, built with essentially slave labor frozen in a caste system, built huge pyramids to memorialize himself and his family, covering previous pyramids. The pyramids are huge; it took millions of hours of labor without beasts of burden or iron tools. The aristocracy and peasants were hereditary without social mobility. I suspect the cost of building and maintaining the structures to memorialize a person who did nothing, by the people he oppressed and who got nothing for their hard work was the straw that broke the back of the government. A few small, insignificant buildings were erected after Pakal, but society dissolved within a hundred years of his reign. It left great ruins and great proof that, indeed, “Pride goes before the fall’.
Supper was what we could find. The place is as lovely to look at as Costa Rica.
- Grandpa




Palenque had a beautiful nature walk through the jungle, down the side of a rushing mountain stream such as I have never known, with incredible waterfalls.
- Naomi