B and I were walking around checking out hotels in Palenque today. Actually, we’d just eaten lunch, and I was thinking about visiting hotels. I really, really hate doing hotel inspections–or I hate thinking about doing them. Like so many things, they actually end up being kind of fun and informative in the end, but I never can remember that at the start.
Anyway, first hotel we stopped in was shiny bright and clean–a nice change from last night’s cabana, which was a natural refuge for at least seven distinct specias of Chiapas spiders. Also, a translucent frog–translucent the way geckos are. B saw that and said, Aren’t those the poisonous ones? Always a nice thing to think about right before bed.
Anyway again, we see this nice clean hotel–really, sparkling. M$200 a night (aka US$20). Parking. Continental breakfast delivered to your room. We smile, we take a card, we walk to the door…and the sky opens up. Total deluge. We turn around and book a room. We nap to the sound of rain spattering on the metal roof. It worked out swimmingly.
Except, of course, for all the charming places we visited after the rain stopped, where the people were so nice we actually felt guilty for not giving them our business as well.
We were walking up the main town drag today when a giant parade float went by, covered in red heart-shaped balloons and teenage girls in white leotards and glittery angel wings.
Also, oh yeah, saw yet another clown yesterday.
Back on the subject of hotels: the reason B and I were in the Palenque Spider Reserve last night is that as soon as we pulled into the alleged best cabanas on the road to the ruins and saw one dude with dreadlocks, I just could not bear it. I could already hear the late-night drum circle and the annoying talk about shamans. I put the PT Cruiser in reverse and we hightailed it to the most random, only-reachable-by-car-and-therefore-not-accessible-to-backpackers cabanas we could find.
This reaction makes me think I am no longer qualified for this job. Though it’s not entirely my fault. The reason I cannot go the backpacker route, and instead drive around in a rental car, is because backpacking requires time–and I cannot afford to take the time, or I would never be able to make my book deadline. So I can’t actually live the lifestyle I’m allegedly researching. I like to think I’m not a fraud, but sometimes I wonder.
On the upside, I saw some great ruins today. I heard howler monkeys. I bought a beaded shrimp keychain. I got served more than half a chicken for lunch. And I got to nap on the spur of the moment at a very clean hotel.
Tomorrow: Ocosingo, and some waterfalls. (Or that’s the plan…actually failed to spend any time at the cacao plantations I mentioned in the last post, thanks to some monstrous highway construction, and also lingering over a giant breakfast shake of chocolate milk, oatmeal, granola and every kind of fruit you can think of. You can see how that would’ve slowed me down a little.)