Then we headed south, away from the national parks. We'll take the next two days to get back to Vegas for our flight home.
Tonight, we're in Kingman, AZ, on historic Route 66. Even our motel follows the Mother Road theme, with lots of memorabilia and a cute soda shop breakfast room. It was 96 degrees when we rolled in at 6pm, so I was happy to try out their big swimming pool. Bliss.
23 Feb. 2009
Surrounded by dozens of traditional Tzotzil and Tzeltal villages, San Cristóbal de los Casas sits at 7800 feet elevation. Two local weavers, Juana and Catalina, guided our bus to their village.
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22 Feb. 2009
Palenque is a national treasure and one of the best examples of Maya architecture in Mexico.
Palenque's huge temples rise from the mist; a jungle canopy of green surrounds them.
It is otherworldly.
Bus departed Ciudad del Carmen 9:00 a.m.
Another day, another state. And another. We lost time waiting for traffic stalled on the bridge into Tabasco. Armando borrowed binoculars and clambered on top of our bus to investigate. Ria Grijalva meets the Gulf of Mexico with a mud brown line. The state of Tabasco is a flat, steamy lowland; prone to flooding.
20 Feb. 2009 Bus departed Mérida at 7:00 a.m. Reserva de la Biosfera Ría Celestún is a wildlife sanctuary west of Mérida. It is a brackish estuary where much of the water is only knee-deep over sandbars. Mangroves line the shore. We saw roseate spoonbills, pelicans, egrets, herons, terns, cormorants, coots, storks, and FLAMINGOS on our two-hour boat tour. The horizon line was PINK 
Bus departed 7:00 a.m.
It was a three-hour drive to the crowded most-famous Mayan site, Chichén Itzá (Mouth of the Well of the Itzáes) (Everyone wanted to check off seeing one of the new Seven Wonders of the World). We passed into the state of Yucatán on the way there.
We arrived at 10 a.m. and it was already 95 degrees. Our tour guide was Abel, a young man with a gift of persuasion and a trusty backpack binder. He contrasted “urban legends” of bloody sacrifice with compelling alternate views. We walked around the pyramids trying to imagine the history of this powerful city.
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