2017 - 2018:  Punta Mita Mexico to Quetzaltenango Guatemala

Dec 4, 2017. Villahermosa, Tabasco, Provincia Express hotel

• Bus to Comalcalco for a walk through this most western of Mayan sites, contemporary with Palenque (classic period, 250-900 AD). Since there was no stone nearby, it was built with kiln-fired bricks, then covered with stucco.  The museum was closed, damn it.

• Is the only major Maya city built with bricks rather than limestone masonry.  Comalcalco was founded in the Late Classic period and may have been a satellite or colony of Palenque.  There were only four other visitors.

Dec 5, 2017.  Villahermosa, Provincia Express hotel 

• Rented a car at the airport for a long drive to otherwise hard to get to Malpasito, a post-classic Zoque Mayan ruin which, once more, I had to myself.  Nicely situated amongst the highest mountains in Tabasco, but not too much to see - and I was only able to find one of the supposedly over three hundred petroglyphs in the area.  

• Drove back to Comalcalco to catch the museum I missed yesterday.  On display were many of the etched bricks, whose designs faced inward so they couldn’t be seen.  Lovely, simple line drawings of animals, birds, people, almost like cartoons.  Also some enormous clay funerary urns, with the human remains found inside one on display.

Dec 6, 2017.  Tapijulapa, Tabasco, Mesón de la Sierra

• The prettiest village in Tabasco, and a nice change from Villahermosa.  Just a couple of narrow streets on a hillside, beside a river.  There were actually some tourists, too - maybe a dozen, and all Mexican.  

• Had a great meal of a pizza-like dish with mushrooms, tomatoes, and other stuff on a great big fried tortilla, and a huge pitcher of chocolate drink I had no way of finishing.  

• Then a ten minute boat ride up the Rio Oxolotán followed by a 15 minute walk to some very nice cascadas of bluish water.  Back in town by 5, and oh so peaceful it here, the silence broken only occasionally by somebody lighting some mighty powerful firecrackers.