Palenque is a set of Mayan ruins in the south of Mexico that was once a city state that disappeared after the Eighth Century.  It is also known as Big Water.  After it was abandoned, it was overtaken by the jungle, but has since been excavated and refurbished.  It is possible that there are still thousands of structures that are still uncovered in the jungle.  I’d been to Palenque once before, with an extremely cheap camera.  This time I was taking a rune out there for a photo op.  The rune that I drew was Laguz, signifying water, which seemed appropriate.

To get out to the ruins I took a collective that waited on the corner.  On my way to it, I got tamales and coffee, and listened to an amputee in a wheelchair sing karaoke for change.  Mexico is full of life.  People belong in the street.  America is full of loneliness.  People hide and die alone in buildings.  As soon as they die, they get swept up and hidden as well.  Death is the greatest taboo in the US, that, and failure. 

Before reaching the archaeological park, the van I was in pulled over so myself and another tourist could jump out and buy tickets.  There was a wrist band we needed for a hundred pesos and then another ticket for eighty, about twenty dollars in total.  When we got to the ruins there were a lot of vendors and guides outside the gate.  All I really wanted was to be left alone, to sit in peace and find a good place to photograph my rune.

The Mayan belief system was polytheistic in that they believed in many gods, and animistic in that they believed every object, living or otherwise to have a soul.  They believed that three worlds were joined by a sacred ceiba tree.  The nine levels of the Underworld were the roots, the Middleworld was the trunk, and the thirteen heavens of the Skyworld were the branches.  It was believed that the pyramid temples were places where the different worlds could be accessed.  Through ritual and trance, some of which involved human sacrifice and bloodletting, the kings and priests were said to be able to speak for the gods.

I stared my tour by sitting on the ground across from the Temple of Inscriptions and taking a picture of Laguz, propped up on a bench.  The Temple of Inscriptions is where the tomb of the king Pascal was excavated.  He and his son, Chan-Bahlum, or Snake-Jaguar, were responsible for making Palenque a great power in its time.  There were howler monkeys in the jungle, their roar as loud and terrifying as that of a jaguar, but they kept themselves hidden. 

The fact that all of the ruins were roped off, made for a short tour.  In the past it had taken a good deal of exertion to ascend to the top of the Temple of the Cross.  Now I just walked past it, that, and the Temple of the Sun, and headed over to the Palace, a small stream running beside it.  After wandering through the ball court, there wasn’t much left to look at.  I would’ve liked to walk through the back exit, down a trail that passes a few waterfalls, but that was roped off as well. 

I was accomplishing my mission on this trip, taking pictures of the runes at the ruins, but not much more than that.  It was lucky I’d been to them before or I might’ve come away disappointed.  As it was, I just checked another rune from the list and went on my way.