The howler monkeys start their chorus at dawn. It sounds like a Jurassic Park sound effect, which is appropriate, because Palenque does not feel like a museum piece. It feels like a city that something large and green is still in the process of eating.
Most people have seen photos of the Temple of the Inscriptions. The stepped pyramid with the single creased roof comb. What the photos do not convey is the humidity, the density of the trees, or the fact that you are standing in a city that was swallowed by the Chiapas rainforest for nearly a thousand years and is only partially digested.
Palenque is not Chichen Itza. Chichen Itza is a parking lot with a pyramid. Palenque is an archaeological site with a jungle problem. The two sites are often compared because they are both Mayan, but the comparison is useless. Chichen Itza is a day trip from Cancun. Palenque is a commitment. You come here because you want to see what happens when a sophisticated civilization builds in the wrong place and the forest wins.
The city was called Lakam Ha by its inhabitants. "Big Water." The name referred to the multiple streams and rivers that run through the site, which the Maya engineered into aqueducts and drainage channels that still work. The Palenque aqueducts are not tourist attractions. They are infrastructure, and they are 1,300 years old.
The site's greatest king was K'inich Janaab' Pakal, who ruled from 615 to 683 AD. He took the throne at 12 years old and held it for 68 years, which is the kind of reign that makes you wonder what he was doing right. The answer, according to his sarcophagus, is that his mother claimed he was the reincarnation of a god. The Maya did not do modesty.
Pakal's tomb is inside the Temple of the Inscriptions. The temple itself is a stepped pyramid with nine levels, representing the nine levels of the Maya underworld. In 1952, the Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier found a hidden staircase behind the temple's central chamber. The staircase descended 80 feet through solid stone. At the bottom, in a sealed crypt, he found Pakal's skeleton, covered in jade jewelry, lying on a slab of limestone carved with an image of the king falling into the underworld between the jaws of a serpent. The jade death mask and most of the jewelry are now in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The tomb itself is closed to the public because humidity was destroying the remaining paint and stucco. You cannot go inside. What you can do is stand at the base of the temple and look up at the structure that was built specifically to hide a dead king's body from grave robbers for thirteen centuries. It worked.
The Palace is next to the Temple of the Inscriptions, and it is the largest structure on the site. It has a four-story tower that archaeologists still argue about. Some think it was an observatory. Some think it was a lookout. Others think it was just a tower because the king wanted a tower. The tower has a narrow staircase that you can climb for a view over the forest canopy. The Palace also has an aqueduct that channels water from a spring through the building and out the other side. The rooms are arranged around courtyards with corbel arches, which are the Maya solution to the problem of not having invented the true arch. The walls are covered in stucco reliefs of Pakal's ancestors and various gods. Some of the stucco has survived. Most of it has not.
The Temple of the Cross Group is a ten-minute walk through the jungle from the main plaza. The path is paved but the trees meet overhead, and you will see coatis and spider monkeys and enough tropical birds to make you wish you had brought binoculars. The group consists of three temples: the Temple of the Cross, the Temple of the Sun, and the Temple of the Foliated Cross. They were built by Pakal's son, K'inich Kan Bahlam, and each contains a carved stone tablet showing the king in conversation with a deity. The tablets are still in place. The Temple of the Cross has the most famous one, which shows Kan Bahlam standing before a cross-shaped world tree that grows out of a skeletal underworld monster. This is not a Christian cross. It is a Maya cosmological diagram, and it is 1,300 years old. The image is on the Mexican 100-peso note.
The site museum is near the entrance and is worth thirty minutes. It contains a full-scale replica of Pakal's sarcophagus lid, because the original is in Mexico City and weighs five tons. It also has stucco fragments, ceramic figurines, and a model of the site that shows how much of the city is still buried. The answer is most of it. Palenque has roughly 1,400 mapped structures. Only about 100 have been excavated. The rest are still under the trees.
The town of Palenque is ten minutes from the ruins by colectivo. It is not a charming colonial town. It is a functional transit hub with hotels, bus stations, and restaurants that cater to people who are either going to the ruins or leaving them. The Hotel Maya Tulipanes is directly across from the ADO bus station and charges about $40 USD per night for a clean room with air conditioning. The Hotel Ciudad Real is slightly more expensive and slightly nicer. For budget travelers, the Posada El Maple has dorm beds for $10 and private rooms for $25. The town has no particular reason to exist except that the ruins need a support system.
Getting to Palenque is the hard part. The nearest airport is in Villahermosa, which is two hours north by bus. ADO runs first-class buses from Villahermosa to Palenque for about 300 pesos ($15 USD). The bus from San Cristobal de las Casas takes four hours on a winding mountain road and costs about 350 pesos. The road is scenic and occasionally nauseating. If you are coming from Merida, the bus is eight hours and you will question your life choices.
The site entrance costs 90 pesos, which is about $5 USD. That is cheap for one of the most significant archaeological sites in the Americas. The site opens at 8:00 AM and closes at 5:00 PM. The first hour is the best hour. The tour buses from San Cristobal arrive around 10:00 AM. By noon, the main plaza is full of people taking selfies in front of the Temple of the Inscriptions. At 8:00 AM, you have the place to the monkeys.
If you have an extra day, Agua Azul is an hour east of Palenque. It is a series of waterfalls that run over limestone shelves into turquoise pools. The entrance is 50 pesos. The water is cold and the current can be strong after rain. Misol-Ha is another waterfall, thirty minutes from Palenque, with a single 35-meter drop that you can walk behind. The entrance is 30 pesos. Both are worth visiting, but both are crowded by midday. Go early.
For a more serious archaeological expedition, Yaxchilan and Bonampak are deeper in the forest on the Guatemalan border. Yaxchilan requires a boat ride on the Usumacinta River and has lintel carvings that are among the finest in the Maya world. Bonampak has a temple with murals that show Maya warfare in color, including a scene of a captured lord having his fingernails removed. The entrance to each is 65 pesos. Getting there requires a full day and a guide, because the roads are questionable and the logistics are complicated.
What to skip in Palenque: the restaurants directly outside the ruins gate. They sell overpriced tacos and warm Coca-Cola to people who have not yet realized that the town is ten minutes away and has better food for half the price. The unofficial guides who wait at the entrance and offer tours in broken English for 500 pesos. The official INAH guides are licensed, charge about 800 pesos for a two-hour tour, and actually know what they are talking about. The souvenir shops that sell mass-produced "Mayan" masks made in China. The sound-and-light show, which does not exist, so you do not need to skip it.
The last thing to understand about Palenque is that the jungle is not a backdrop. It is the main character. The city was abandoned around 800 AD, and the forest took it back. The trees grew through the buildings. The roots split the walls. The howler monkeys moved in. The archaeologists who excavated the site in the twentieth century did not uncover a city. They cut a narrow path through the forest and let the rest stay buried. What you see at Palenque is a tiny fraction of what is still under the trees. The Maya built a city that could process water, track astronomical cycles, and calculate the orbit of Venus. They did not build a city that could beat the jungle. The jungle won.
Go at 8:00 AM. Wear long pants. Bring water. Do not expect a gift shop experience. Expect a city that is still being digested.
By Finn O'Sullivan
Irish storyteller and folklorist. Finn hunts for the narratives that do not make guidebooks—the pub legends, the family feuds, the neighborhood heroes. He believes every street corner has a story if you know who to ask.