Saturday, September 15, 2012

Day 331: Misol-Ha and Agua Azul

After the historical/cultural blast yesterday, I decided to go and marvel at nature today. About an hour from the town of Palenque, there were two big waterfalls just waiting for my visit. The first one was called Misol-Ha (the name sounded almost Japanese to me). The amazing thing about this waterfall was not just its height, or the fact that it plunged into a beautiful blue pool...


... but rather the possibility to walk around the waterfall and see it from behind:


When we got to the second waterfall, or rather system of waterfalls in this case, I all but forgot about Misol-Ha, however. Agua Azul - blue water - was very aptly named; the blue color of the river and the pools was simply beautiful. This is looking at the river downstream, so you can see the pools formed by the waterfalls, but not the falls themselves:


From the same viewpoint, looking upstream, this is what made my jaw drop:


Wow! The best thing about Agua Azul was that this wasn't the only place where the river looked like this. You could hike upstream and find several more waterfalls, and in between there were quiet pools to swim in and cool off in the hot weather. Fantastic!