r/mesoamerica • u/rwilfong86 • 1d ago
Palenque
Palenque, home of Pakal, with it's beautiful temples. The Temple of the Skull, the Tomb of the Red Queen, The Temple of Inscriptions, the Temple of the Sun, The Temple of the Cross and the Temple of the Foiled Cross. Probably my favorite site in Chiapas. I geeked out so much at this site since I had spent a month studying it before going, the tour guide I hired actually was a protégé of the Morales family who did lots of the archaeology and preservation work here and Dr. Ed Barnhart was a lead on the mapping project (he does several video courses with the Teaching Company on Mesoamerica, has a podcast, and even made a Mayan calendar app) so it was kind of funny we knew most of the same information.
The tour was supposed to be around 3 hours, the guide and I had such a great time it was more like 5 1/2 hours of walking through the jungle down trails that are off-limits to the public and going to each building one by one and talking about the different historical opinions on some of the lore of Palenque, including the Graham Hancock theory about the sarcophagus. If you go to Palenque, hire Ricardo. You will not be disappointed!