Day 4 - Palenque, Mexico – June 11th

So…this hotel has free wifi over in the restaurant so Mike decided to look up what escamoles were that we had for dinner our first night Mexico. It turns out that we ate ant larvae. So it really was like a bowl of maggots! There is NO WAY I would have eaten that if I’d known what it was. On to our adventures today. We left our marvelous bungalows at 7:45 this morning and drove to the ruins of Palenque. The town we are staying nearby is also called Palenque. The ruins are fantastic and so well preserved. We spent 4 hours walking and climbing and exploring this awesome old city. This city was mentioned by Joseph Smith as being some of the mighty works of the Nephites. We arrived back at our cute little jungle bungalows around 1:00. We crossed a large iguana on the path by our little house, and before breakfast this morning I saw a family of acouti. They look like a cross between hamsters and piglets. They are about a foot long. As I was reading my book on the verandah, I heard a bunch of rustling in the trees about 20 feet over. I walked around to get a better look and saw a family of spider monkeys in the tree tops. And there are lizards that run away from you on two legs, so cute! This is such a cool place. There is a huge pool here that is really nice, so Mike and I went swimming for a couple hours. Shortly after we started swimming there was a short downpour with lightning and thunder. It was great fun swimming in the rain. It only lasted about 10 minutes. The weather was wonderful the rest of the day. Several other people from our group were there as well, and we played fun water games with them. Dinner was at 7:00. It was very good again. I loved the sweet corn chowder and tortilla soups. They had beef in gravy with onions that was good also. After dinner we had a little video chat with Dave. He told us that Megan wrecked my van the day her drivers license came in the mail  It was nice to check in at home. We also had a little fireside with John Lund. He talked about the calendars and money of the Maya, and the Law of Moses in the Book of Mormon. In the morning we leave here and go to Guatemala. I will be sad to leave this place.