Having slept like logs, the early morning alarm call jolts us out of bed, with a bit of dread for the day ahead. It’s due to be one of the highlights of our entire adventure, a much anticipated visit to the spectacular Mayan site of Palenque. But yesterday’s torrential storm is due to bring more bad weather today and, in addition to the sounds of monkeys and birds in the jungle that surrounds our hotel, rattling on the roof we can hear the sound of rain as we get dressed. 

Thankfully by the time we’ve wolfed down a quick breakfast, the rain has finally stopped and our guide Joyce, who is waiting for us in the lobby, reassures us that today is a great day to be visiting Palenque as the cloudy skies will protect us from the sun and make the site look even more dramatic in our photos. We channel our inner Indiana Jones, dressed in matching safari suits, with built-in sunblock and mosquito repellent, and don our new wide-brimmed hats from Oaxaca, looking like a couple of gay army captains from the 1940s. 

Joyce tells us he thinks we look smart rather than ridiculous and anyway, who cares what people think - he was named by his mother after James Joyce and so was teased mercilessly at school for having a girl’s name, but he never let it bother him. I ask him if he’s ever read anything by the author and he confesses to having tried to get through ‘Ulysses’ but had to give up, just like everyone else. His knowledge of his own country and the Maya however is encyclopaedic. 

Once our driver Sergio deposits us at the entrance to the site, Joyce shows us a map of the ruins on the wall of a little hut and explains that its original name was Lakam Há, meaning “place of great waters”, as there are 56 fresh water springs and nine streams that the Maya used to construct canals through the area. First built as a village about 150BC it was about four hundred years later at the start of what is called the Classic Period (250-900AD) that construction in stone started. Palenque soon became the capital of a powerful dynasty ruling vast regions of what are now the states of Chiapas and Tabasco.

The grand royal buildings on display date from 600AD onwards and were ordered by the great emperor Pakal, who ascended to the throne aged just 12 and ruled from 615-683AD and whose son was an architect and designed most of what we see. The quality of his work, and the intricacy of the stonemasons’ carvings and glyphs have given invaluable insight to modern-day understanding of the Maya and the buildings sheer size and scale meant they survived through the centuries and have been cleared and restored by explorers and archaeologists. However over 98% of the site, mainly residential and workers buildings, remains completely uncovered and unexcavated, partly because large areas of the site are now back in the hands of indigenous tribes or under Zapatista control.  

The name Palenque is actually a Castillano word given to it by the Spanish which essentially means “big wooded jungle place” and written records exist from the late 1500s of a Spanish priest who came to the New World with Bartolomé de las Casas, named Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada, having sent word to the Spanish authorities in Guatemala about local rumours of a huge stone city hidden in the jungle. 

However it wasn’t until 1776 that a Catholic priest, Juan Solis, got lost in the jungle on Christmas Eve while on his way to celebrate an annual Christmas mass for indigenous tribes, and prayed for a miracle. Shortly afterwards he stumbled on the ruined tower of the ancient royal palace, which was sticking out above the jungle canopy, and found shelter. From then on visitors started coming and in the early 1800s explorers started to slowly uncover the huge pyramids and temples we see today. 

We start with the Temple of the Skull from about 750AD, which is actually three temples in one, as what we see now is a pyramid built over an earlier temple, which was itself built upon an original from 580AD, inside which a burial chamber containing over 700 pieces of jade was found. Next to it is the Tomb of the Red Queen, dating from 655AD, which was the burial chamber of Lord Pakal’s wife, IxTz'ak-buAjaw.

Her stone sarcophagus was filled with jade and obsidian treasures including a jade face mask and her body was covered with cinnabar, a red resin, hence the name of the tomb. Cinnabar, mixed with mercury sulfate, is highly poisonous so would have killed any grave robbers before they could loot her treasures. 

It’s the one tomb we’re allowed to enter so Coman and I climb up and have a quick poke around inside. Thankfully there’s no traces of the cinnabar left for any royal reprisals. Joyce tell us that bone analysis has recently revealed that the Red Queen was both “very fat and very ugly”, but apparently hugely powerful. And the fact Lord Pakal ordered such an enormous building to be constructed for her tomb suggests he either loved her very much or was just plain terrified of her. 

Pakal’s own pyramid is the biggest of the tombs with the Temple of Inscriptions on top, containing all sorts of elaborate carvings recording events up to a million years in the past and predicting others still to come many thousands of years from now. And inside it is the famous tomb we saw recreated in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City where Pakal’s own spectacular jade mask was found. It was discovered in 1952 by Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz L'huillier who opened the burial chamber 25 metres below the floor of the temple. At its centre is a monolithic limestone sarcophagus whose carved lid is probably the best known Maya relief today and represents “K'inichJanahb Pakal” emerging from the earth in an act of rebirth.

In the carving Pakal becomes the God of Maize, as a personification of the cycle of corn being born, growing, dying and returning to the earth to descend into the underworld. It records the Mayan cosmological view that man was created by the gods from corn dough, and the scene reflects deep cultural beliefs about death and the nature of human life. Inscriptions on the sarcophagus show three dates which record Pakal’s birth date, the date of his death and his date of “arrival”, which is a precise date way in the future, in 4772 AD. 

This inscription - along with the fact that if you turn the carving of Pakal’s rebirth in the Mayan corn tree of life on its side, squint hard and take a hell of a lot of drugs, then you might possibly think he’s driving some form of spaceship - led controversial 60s archaeologist Eric van Daniken to surmise that the Mayans were guardians of knowledge from extra-terrestrial contact and that Pakal was an astronaut riding a chariot of the gods. It’s the basis for writers like Graham Hancock to propose radical alternative theories of civilisation and human history in books like Fingerprints of the Gods, and his recent controversial TV series on Netflix. 

Joyce shows us the sarcophagus carving by using the lid of a box one of the souvenir sellers is flogging outside the temple, and the vendor then holds up a big leather representation of it that he’s very keen for us to buy. We tell him we’re vegetarians which is the perfect excuse to quickly move on, although Coman does succumb to buying a new Palenque baseball cap so we don’t look quite so much like we’ve stepped out of a 1950s film set. 

The enormous Royal Palace is next, which was where the family lived in great splendour with running water, flushing toilets, hot baths and more, and at whose centre is the tower that saved Father Juan Solis by appearing above the jungle treetops all those Christmases ago. Rather than the other pyramid style building in Mesoamerican culture, which had narrow steps to the summit to inspire devotion before the gods, these are broad and easy to climb. Joyce tells us it’s because they were actually used by the king and his nobles as seats to watch rituals and entertainment played out before them in the plaza below.

We get the chance to climb the Temple of the Sun, the Temple of Birth (where royal babies were born) and the Temple of the Cross, which has a hieroglyphic of a god smoking a big phat joint before walking down through the ball court and viewing the buildings that housed the embassies from the contemporary Toltec civilisation and the great rival city of Teotihuacan hundreds of miles north near modern day Mexico City. 

Our exit is across a rope bridge by waterfalls that were used for the Queen’s Baths, creating refreshing pools for her to have spa days away from the busy goings on in the centre of Lakam Há. It’s a lovely and tranquil walk through the jungle to the meeting point where Sergio is waiting but the tranquility is disturbed by an enormous construction site at the side of the road as we leave. 

Joyce tells us that soon a brand new Mayan Railroad will be opened, not for Mexicans but for tourists. It will be a circular train loop around the Yucatán peninsula starting and ending near Cancun, connecting all the major Mayan ruins, such as Palenque, Chichen Itzá, Calakmul, Uxmal, Tulum and more with colonial cities such as Mérida, Campeche and Valladolid, in an attempt to encourage the fly-and-flop holidaymakers who come to the all-inclusive hotels on the Mayan Riviera to explore more of the area instead and spread the wealth around south-eastern Mexico, traditionally the poorest part of the country. 

It’s an admirable aim to improve the lives of poorer Mexicans but God knows how much of the jungle is being destroyed to create it. We can only think of how devastated Frans and Gertrude Blom would be at this development. And even more so at the huge new freight railway we learn is currently being constructed with the help of the US and Chinese which will connect Salinacruz, a new mega-port on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca with Veracruz on the Caribbean coast of Tabasco. The aim is to create a non-stop, 24 hour-a-day rail super-highway running in both directions to transport billions of tonnes of consumer crap none of us need each year between Asia, the US and Europe, and thus bypassing the slower Panama Canal. 

But of course the idea of actually helping Mexicans themselves travel in a greener fashion around their own country by investing in a domestic rail network isn’t even considered due to the hegemony of the gas-guzzling bus companies and local airlines. And the biggest Mexican exports that will benefit from this new railroad? The hundreds of enormous car factories that exist throughout the country and the giant industrial cattle farms which are destroying vast swathes of Mexican rainforest every day to feed the world’s insatiable appetite for meat. The world really is on a one way ticket to catastrophe.

Natural wonders still exist though and after leaving Palenque we drive to the waterfalls and miraculously blue waters of Agua Azul along the direct but dangerous road that directly connects San Cristóbal de las Casas with Palenque, and which we had to bypass yesterday. It’s absolutely beautiful with gorgeous scenery of little farms growing tropical fruit, including passion fruit, guava, pineapples, bananas, cacao and corn. Tiny villages pop up here and there and small herds of cattle are in the field as we wind up and down steep hillsides with long drops. 

We ask Joyce about the much mooted dangers of taking this road and he tells us it’s hugely over-exaggerated and in fact he actually drove to San Cristóbal and back yesterday in his own car. He concedes that the terrifying weather made the jungle road treacherous, “but I’ve done it enough not to worry - too much!”  

What about the armed bandits we’ve been warned about though? He laughs and says there’s been no attacks on tourists for years, if not decades. The issue is that indigenous peoples near San Cristóbal often block the road for a day or two, either to protest about something or to have a ritual or fiesta. In those instances vehicles literally cannot pass so the big bus companies, who pre-sell their tickets online with a duty to ensure their passengers arrive at their destinations, opt for the hugely long way round rather than get stuck with all their passengers on board. 

However, collectivos (local minibuses) run the routes every day and so for backpackers not on a tight schedule you just pay 100 pesos for the journey (literally a tenth of what we paid) and pile your bags into the van with you and wind your way along the roads. If there’s a roadblock all the passengers descend, buy a couple of drinks from the locals, carry their bags across the picket line and wait on the other side until a collectivo from the other direction arrives to help them get to their destination. “It’s an adventure!” Joyce laughs. 

Perhaps if we were on an open-ended schedule without a well-planned itinerary we’d have given it a chance, although given the weather conditions yesterday and the narrow roads that would rapidly become impassable, it feels like we made the right choice. And at least we’re getting to see the glorious scenery today in the section nearer Palenque. Sadly however, yesterday’s torrential rain means the agua azul is now distinctly agua marrón instead as the deluge has turned the usual gorgeous turquoise waters the colour of mud. 

Once we arrive we have lunch at a little restaurant called El Paraíso run by Joyce’s friend, where we are surrounded at our table by children trying to sell us coffee, dried bananas, chocolates and more, balancing food on their heads and swarming tourists in the buses. After much competition from the kids, all aged between about six and twelve, we choose Emily, who had stuck out her little finger and announced we had made a pinky promise with her, and buy a set of homemade dark chocolate discs from her. The sulky faces from the rest of her friends at her luck over theirs are simultaneously amusing and heartbreaking, but we can’t help everyone we meet.  

We spend about an hour walking around the waterfalls, running the gauntlets of souvenir stalls and pop up restaurants that surround them. The unique attraction of the water is its iridescent mineral colour, creating a miraculous effect as bright blue water gushes over rocks and steep drops, glistening in the sunlight and creating jungle pools for swimmers. There are even tiny backpacker hostels offering rooms for £8 a night for those who wish to stay and hike in the region.

However the torrents of murky brown waters, propelled with huge force by the floods of yesterday are far too dangerous - and uninviting - to swim in so our swim-shorts remain in our bags. But the setting and drama of the cascadas are still a treasure worth seeing, reminiscent of Iguaçu Falls in South America, although significantly smaller in scale. 

Back at the hotel that evening, after a wander though the grounds checking out the gorgeous jungle plants that line the pathways to the little cabins the guests stay in, we chat to a couple of ladies from London who had also been on our bus ride from San Cristóbal yesterday. As they’re staying in Palenqué for a few days they’d postponed their visit to Agua Azul until the waters clear to their usual famous blue so had been for a long and slightly liquid lunch instead at a restaurant called Monteverde about a fifteen minute walk away. 

Highly recommending it as a spot for dinner, we decide to eat there rather than in the little hotel restaurant but are not quite prepared for the walk in darkness we find ourselves on. Initially we are guided by streetlights but soon find ourselves turning down a rural pathway to follow a sign to the restaurant with just the lights of our torches to guide us. Putting thoughts of snakes, spiders, insects and even jaguars to one side we eventually alight upon the restaurant hidden at the end of a bumpy track deep in the jungle and it lives up to its billing. 

Great food, great cocktails, great decor and, most gratefully, a taxi service to take us back to our hotel. We’re sure as hell not risking that walk back!!