Welcome to the Jungle!

A gruelling 23 hour bus ride from Puerto Escondido, via San Christobel, meant we finally arrived in a Mexican rainforest at Palenque. We arrived at the shitty bus terminal just before 9pm, bought some drinks and snacks and caught a taxi to Mayabell (taxi: P$60).

We only had a beer and 2 slices of bread (a loaf was cheaper than real food) and were grotty after the hair-raizing windy roads through thick jungle in the middle of the night, with a bus driver who was 2 hours behind his schedule.

Mayabell is really nice with a  very hippy vibe. We arrived in the dark and luckily got the only ‘arboral casa arriba’ a little room in a tree house. Very cute and rustic! Just a bed & fan, with an awesome slide you can slide down when you’re done, sweet!

Our home for the night.

There were a bunch of tents and caravans around the tree house, and after our over-priced and not-so-delicious meal we went for a quick dip in the pool. It’s massive. Too nervous to swim in a huge dark pool at night we went to bed.

Awoke at night with the insanely loud sound of Howler Monkeys! I was so excited. It sounds like the scary black smoke thing from Lost, or that air is rapidly escaping their lungs and they’re screaming in pain. The asthmatic monkeys were really awesome to hear though, and we felt like we were finally in the jungle…

And then the morning came and we saw the massive trees overgrown with creepers, lots of birds and every shape and size green leaf you can imagine. We were going to camp from tonight onwards, so I set up our tent while Robbie packed our bags. A really nice guy came to help me set the tent – Santiago. He’s from Tulum, Mexico, and was wearing a poncho, with long hair and a warm smile. I said I didn’t like all the people camping here – it’s like a resort, and he pointed into the jungle and said, no man just camp over there. We walked about 2 min further and a massive open area was perfect for camping.

Can you spot us, tucked away in the distance?

The whole experience went from camping in the middle of a resort to camping in the jungle.  Our tent was 10m away from over-grown Mayan ruins and huge fig trees shaded the area wonderfully. After pitching our tent, a howler monkey was climbing in the trees close by and the birds were chirping all kinds of tunes. It was so nice to be here.

Cute little monkey, and the noise they make is so disproportionate to their size!

Santiago came and asked if we wanted to go to a waterfall – hell’s yeah, it’ super hot! Waterfalls were great – limestone caves with rounded stones covered in moss and algae and water rushing over them was refreshing  after a hot walk to get there. We hung out for a bit, and walked through the jungle to get back to Mayabell. Stunning!

Looking up the waterfall...

A simple lunch with tacos, guacamole, tomato and ham we bought for cheap, cheap at the SuperChe meant our budget was getting in order.  I showed him my  fossilised shark tooth that Kyle gave to me and wanted to mount it on a necklace. He makes jewellery and stuff for a living. We swam by the pool for the rest of the day, just chilling relaxing, thinking how hard our lives are and how we long to work for 8 hours….life’s so tough!

Our picnic area, amongst the leaf litter and tons of goggas.

Around 6pm we started making our fire for the braai. Rob and his magical magnesium lighter saved the day again and we made a wicked little fire between 2 roots of a huge fig tree. We made a great Chinese salad – cucumber, lemon, chilli, coriander, onion, garlic and tons of lime.  Santiago came with my necklace – it’s gorgeous, so now I can wear my South African shark tooth, given to me in Korea by Kyle, mounted in Mexico!  Yay! He was playing the ukulele and chilling with us, so nice. Our meal was getting perfect when a park ranger said we can’t make fires, but it’s all good, we were allowed to finish our meal. Then the wind suddenly picked up and we knew it was about to rain.

Salud!

So in a flash we had to set up the rain cover – and there was a cute little froggie sitting on our tent, awwww ! I didn’t want to move him, but he’d get squashed. Oh – there are tons & tons of spiders here. Rob has no choice but to get over his fear.  They crawl absolutely everywhere, but they are small, about as big or bit bigger than a R5/W500 coin. Their mouths are too small to bite you – that’s what I say. Rob’s really amazing, he doesn’t show his fear at all – maybe it was all an act to get me to move all the massive rain spiders in the middle of the night from our room at University. Tsk tsk.

Little froggie made our tent the perfect hunting spot.

A great meal later, we hit the sack. Rob went out like a light bulb, and when I switched my torch off it was the definition of pitch black. Great to be in the jungle, “we had fun & games”.