Senor Emilio turned up to take me on a 8 hour journey from Merida to Palenque. The roads to start with were very good, better than Britain and we made good time. Driving in Mexico is a little different to back home even apart from driving on the right hand side of the road. Mexicans use hazard lights as additional braking lights and drive on the hard shoulder if it seems like a good idea.

We were held up by lots of police checkpoints and custom stations and paying fees to enter different states inside Mexico. Saw the terrain change from the flatness around Merida to the coast by the Gulf of Mexico then mangrove swamps then actual mountains near Palenque. We saw illegal immigrants entering from Guatemala - is there somewhere without illegal immigrants?

Lunch at a place Emilio chose which had a filthy broken toilet. The Horchata ground rice drink wasn’t bad, but I didn’t finish that or the chicken soup and worried about food poisoning.

We crawled in traffic jams the last part of the way to the lovely La Aldea hotel in Palenque. Really like being in a jungle. And rather like being in a jungle no one speaks English so life here was on the interesting side. The restaurant here was lovely and evocative but a challenge. I ended up with the dessert and the main course arriving together this day which wasn’t my intention. I did learn that propina seems to be Spanish for tip so that did help later.