Anopheles v. Mephistopheles

Alluding to the title of my post, I would much rather sell my soul to the devil than have to live with mosquitoes. Yesterday I counted 10 bites on each of my feet alone, and a couple of days before that I had 17 on just my left arm. But I'm not here to gripe about my hardships; these are all sacrifices I willingly take to discover the world for you people sat at home, going to work (ha ha ha!).

In the course of my aforementioned research, I have come across an amazing discovery, that, I'm sure you'll agree, will have profound repercussions on Mexican archaeology. And that is, that the ancient Mayans were, in most probability, either aliens or mutants. How so? you might well ask, when so many people have been studying them for so long. Well, it's quite simple really, and anyone who has visited any Maya sites will corroborate my evidence. You see, all the stairs in the Mayan pyramids and other buildings are both ridiculously high and narrow, especially if you look at the modern day descendants of the Maya, who are generally on the short side. Therefore the ancient Mayans must have had disproportionately long legs and small feet, or they walked on stilts, or they just had a hell of a lot of trouble climbing their own buildings. Anyway, I'm beginning to babble, or have been for some time. It would be better if I actually talked about Palenque, which is a really impressive site, with many ruins, oxymoronically (if such a word exists), in a rather good state.

The Mayan civilisation was one of the most important of the Americas and predated the Aztecs (who lived mainly around central Mexico) by about a millennium. They were quite advanced, making discoveries in mathematics, astronomy and had the only pre-colonial writing system (which was subsequently lost and is still being laboriously pieced together) in all of the Americas. Their civilisation had largely dwindled from its zenith (around 900AD) before the coming of the Spanish, although their language, ancient beliefs and traditions still live on to this day, though in altered forms. The ancient cities were also largely lost to the world as they became engulfed by the forest and weren't rediscovered until the end of the 19th century. In fact many of the archaeological sites have only been partly unearthed, with large sections still overgrown by trees and thick undergrowth. Palenque was also submerged in a green shroud, but many of the buildings survived incredibly well and you have to marvel at the feats of engineering that have survived, trying to guess at their way of life and trying to imagine the majesty of the giant palaces and temples during their heyday.

But Palenque isn't just old ruins. There is also much natural beauty in the surrounding countryside, and so many tours will also take you to several nearby waterfalls as well. One, called Misol-Ha, was an archetypal waterfall where you could walk right behind the curtain of falling water and feel refreshed by the invigorating spray, and another was a long series of cataracts spread over 2km with many ideal spots for sitting down and having a picnic (or even having a dip, if you hadn't forgotten your swimming trunks that is).

At the moment I am staying in a cabaña on the beach in a town called Tulum on the Caribbean coast, which has very little going for it except for the beach and (another) Mayan ruins right by the ocean. Anyway, I think it's time I had a little R&R.