Day 317 – Palenque to Xpujil

Bus ride from Palenque to Xpujil

Last night (Day 316), we purchased 2nd class tickets from the ADO bus station in Palenque to travel towards the small town of Xpujil. Unfortunately, the only bus departs at 6pm, arriving around midnight. The tickets cost us 362 MXN / $27.49 AUD per person. The route doesn’t appear on the ADO website, as they only display 1st class buses. 

We woke up and packed our bags into the lockers near the kitchen of our accommodation Casa Jabaab. We bought some supplies for the bus, including dinner from the supermarket Super Chedraui, before walking through the actual town of Palenque.

Palenque the town

We realised how much of the town we hadn’t seen. Our accommodation was in the touristy area La Canada, which is very quiet and isolated. The town itself, had lots of activity. We walked towards the Central Park (Parque Central) and the Parroquia Santo Domingo de Guzmán Church. Close to the church, is a street with lots of trees and seating. 

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We relaxed for a while, before walking back to La Canada. Here we ate at a nice restaurant called Cafe Jade and waited until we had to go back to our hostel.

Second Class Bus

The second class bus left at 6.05pm (scheduled departure was 6.00pm). The bus was a branch of ADO but branded as something else. The bus was surprisingly nice with plenty of overhead storage space. There were even USB chargers, which were overhead. This wasn’t great as it led to dangling wires, but at least we could charge our phones. The bus was initially very hot inside, but as the sun set, this wasn’t an issue.

Besides the bus being slightly older than the 1st class ADO buses, we couldn’t complain. We really enjoyed the second class bus ride. The one downside was that the bus stopped suddenly around midnight, which luckily woke us up. There was no announcement or anything. We were in Xpujil. If we didn’t wake up, we would have missed our stop.

Xpujil after midnight

The streets were dead. The only activity was at the bus stop and a pack of dogs we could see in the distance. Just down the road, before the roundabout, there is an option of taking a taxi. Luckily our accommodation, Hotel Chaac Calakmul was only one block away. We had told our hotel, that we would be arriving late, so they stayed open for us to check in, which was really nice. We were taken to our nice small room, where we had showers before falling asleep as soon as our heads hit the bed.