We’ve been excitedly looking forward to this tour. Picked up by our guide Alejandro, from our accommodation at stupid o’clock we drive out while it’s still dark watching the sun slowly rise casting golden views over valley peaks that are still enveloped in mist.

The only other people on the tour are Andreas from Germany, his Italian wife and their friend, a Mexican woman called Marian.
Our first day involves stops at two waterfalls. Tourist season has ended and we are lucky enough to have them mostly to ourselves. A short hike up to the top of Agua Azul waterfall has us swimming in a cascade pool. An Indigenous village is located right next to the waterfall and we are joined by a little local boy who jumps in naked and comes over to talk. A local woman is having her daily bath in the waterfall pool as we swim and she is soon replaced with another woman who does her clothes washing carefully and methodically beating each of items against a rick ledge in the shallows. Close by, chickens are roaming and young boys are chasing imaginary things with big sticks. The second waterfall is even more deserted and we float on our backs in the water looking up at the cascade. Our guide, Alejandro, is rather hot and a highlight of the day is sneakily watching him pull himself out of the waterfall with a rope.

Apart from the abs, Alejandro is a great guide who is clearly in tune with animals. At one point, he stops the van in the middle of the road, hops out and walks back to where Marian spotted a large spider just sitting on the road. Peering back, we see him coax the spider onto his hand and bring it to us. It’s a bloody tarantula. Placing it on the side of the road out of harm’s way, Alejandro jumps back in the van and we set off again.

We spend several hours in the van all up on the first day but it’s surprisingly peaceful. Rock songs are playing and the views out the window are captivating.

That night, we sleep at our home base in a rustic cabin right beside a running creek in the Lacandon jungle. Our guide introduces us to a new card game which involves wrestling over a wooden prop at various times. Jamille & I, lacking lightning fast reflexes, lose nearly every round. Marian, on the other hand, is madly competitive and Jamille sports some scratches from Marian’s nails. It may have turned vicious at times.

On the second day, we ride a boat up the biggest river in Mexico with Mexico on one side of us and Guatemala on the other. There is no one else around and we have the river to ourselves. Disembarking at a small jetty in the jungle, Alejandro leads us to the Mayan ruins in the lost city of Yaxchilan. The beginning of our jungle trek to the ruins sees us standing unwittingly next to a poisonous snake. Our guide simply shrugs and gently shoos it away. Throughout our walk we encounter spiders, bats and toucans and hear howler monkeys in the distance. The ruins are magnificent and we are the only people there. The boat ride back has us idling past a crocodile sunning itself on a log. Five bright orange butterflies are resting on its head. We also spot monkeys in a tree.

In the afternoon, Jamille and I go on a rafting trip from right outside our cabin with a local guide, Rodriguez. Rodriguez doesn’t speak any English and our 10 Spanish words don’t get us very far so we knew that getting instructions was going to be fun. Alejandro stayed interpreting for us during the briefing. We were given 5 commands to follow in Spanish and trying to remember them in the initial drills was pretty funny, with both of us collapsing into laughter at our mistakes. After 10 minutes of drills in the calm waters, Rodriguez decided we were good to go and Alejandro waved us off, shaking his head, clearly worried we might not make it back. Rather than the fast flowing rapids, this rafting involved long stretches of calm water where we had to flex our puny arm muscles rowing followed by drops down 2 metre cascades. After a bit of screaming at the first drop, it was mostly excited laughter thereafter. Landing at a secluded spot, Rodriguez deflated the raft and we followed him on a hike through the jungle to a waterfall where he had us climbing uphill gushes to a little cave. One of those athletic people with no fear and nimble feet, Rodriguez would randomly scale a tall tree and jump off it down the cliff into the waterfall pool. We didn’t follow him on that one. Another hike through the jungle took us back to base camp.

The third and final day saw more Mayan ruins at Bonampak and Palenque. Eventually dropped off in Palenque town, we hugged everyone goodbye ready to go to the airport for the last leg of our Mexican trip.