San Cristóbal to Palenque the Fun Way: Agua Azul, Misol-Ha and the Ruins in One Day
Everyone travelling through Chiapas has to get from San Cristóbal de las Casas to Palenque at some point, and on paper it’s one of the duller days of the trip. The direct bus takes around eight hours, winding down out of the mountains with nothing much to show for it at the end except a bus station.
We did it a different way, and it turned into one of the best-value days of our whole trip. A van that picks you up at 4:30 in the morning, a swim at the top of a waterfall, one of the great Maya cities, and a drop-off in Palenque at the end of it all.
Compared to sitting on a bus all day for a pure travel day, it was great logistics, a heap of fun and very affordable. A win win win.
You just have to book it the right way..
Table of Contents
The short version
Skip the plain bus. Book the Agua Azul, Misol-Ha and Palenque tour in person on Real de Guadalupe in San Cristóbal, ask to finish in Palenque, and expect to pay around 950 pesos with every entry fee included.
Where you buy it makes a big difference to the price:
Food isn’t included, so bring some cash for breakfast and lunch. It’s a long day, up before dawn and at our hotel in Palenque by around 4pm, but you’d be spending most of those hours on a bus anyway.
Should you just take the bus?
The direct ADO bus is the simpler option, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s around 460 pesos, and it suits you if you’d rather sleep in, if you’ve had your fill of waterfalls, or if you’re travelling at the height of the rainy season, when Agua Azul is more likely to be brown than blue.
But it takes around eight hours, and at the end of it you’ve spent a whole day getting from A to B. The tour costs about 500 pesos more, and roughly 400 of those go on entry fees: Palenque alone is two separate tickets for foreigners in 2026, one for the ruins and one for the national park around them, and together they come to over 300 pesos. In other words, you’re paying very little extra for the van and getting two waterfalls and a Maya city thrown in.
We’d also done our share of long Mexican bus rides by then (one of them ended with an empty wallet), so turning the transfer into a day out was an easy call.
Heads up: The road through Ocosingo occasionally gets blocked by protests, and informal community “tolls” aren’t unheard of in this part of Chiapas. Tours tend to know their way around these, but if you’re going independently, ask locally before you set off.
Getting the price on Real de Guadalupe
San Cristóbal’s tour agencies cluster along Real de Guadalupe, the main tourist street, and almost every one of them has the Palenque tour on a board out the front. Prices aren’t fixed, so the trick is simply to walk the street and ask.
We gave it about thirty minutes, which got us the quotes in the table above, and Chiapas Maya Travel was the one that came down to 950.
Tip: Ask to be dropped in Palenque at the end, rather than driven back to San Cristóbal. It’s the same price either way, and it turns a long day trip into your transfer.
There were four of us, so if you’re travelling as a pair, it’s worth asking around your hostel the night before to see who else is heading the same way.
If you’d rather have it sorted before you arrive, there’s a version on Viator that runs the same route and drops you in Palenque. It’s the convenient option, and you’ll pay noticeably more for it.
4:30am, and a very windy road
San Cristóbal sits at over 2,000 metres, so a 4:30am pickup is a cold, dark start. The van itself was great. We shared it with a local Mexican family and a couple from Ireland we’d become friends with.
The road, on the other hand, was yuck. Super windy, bend after bend as it drops out of the highlands through Ocosingo towards the jungle, with a tope (speed bump) every time you get going. The van stops for breakfast on the way, and you don’t have to eat where they stop (although at that hour of the morning, nobody’s arguing..).
Agua Azul
We reached Agua Azul a little after nine. As a kiwi, I’m spoilt for choice with waterfalls, and we were still blown away by it.
It isn’t one waterfall so much as a whole river falling down a staircase. Water pours white over tier after tier of pale rock into wide pools of the most ridiculous turquoise, and the jungle crowds right up to the edges on both banks. The colour comes from the minerals in the water, which build up those cream-coloured terraces over time. In the rainy season it can turn murky brown after a big downpour, so you’re rolling the dice a little. At the end of June, we got it properly blue.
Most people swim at the bottom of the falls, where the river flattens out into wide, shallow pools. But if you keep walking up the path, past all the vendors selling snacks and souvenirs, there’s another pool at the top of the falls. We had it all to ourselves.
Tip: Wear your swimmers under your clothes, and if you want the top pool, head straight up the path. The stop is only about an hour.
Misol-Ha
Next stop is Misol-Ha, a single waterfall that drops around 35 metres off a jungle cliff into a round pool, with a path that runs around behind the curtain of water.
It was fine. Nothing spectacular, at least after Agua Azul, which is a hard act to follow.. It’s a quick stop, and a good chance to stretch your legs before the last stretch of road.
The Palenque ruins
We reached the ruins just before two in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day to be walking around a Maya city in the jungle, and I actually really enjoyed Palenque.
The Palace sits in the middle of a big green clearing, with its square stone tower poking up above the rest, and across the lawn the Temple of the Inscriptions climbs up its stepped pyramid with the jungle-covered hill rising straight behind it. Stone corridors run under the Palace, and smaller temples sit tucked into the trees around the edges, half-swallowed by the forest. Pakal, the king who ruled the city at its height in the 7th century, is buried deep inside the Temple of the Inscriptions.
It was also a lot less busy than Tikal. We had a little over an hour there, enough for the Palace and the main temples, if not every corner of the site.
In hindsight, I’m really glad we did Palenque before Tikal. Tikal is bigger and grander, and I think Palenque would have been a bit disappointing coming after it.
Tip: Bring water and sunscreen. The ruins are mostly open lawn, and the lowland heat after a cold morning in San Cristóbal is a bit of a shock.
And then the football
The van dropped us in Palenque in the late afternoon, and after a well-earned plate of tacos, we headed into the centre of town.
We’d arrived on the night Mexico played a World Cup knockout game, and it was insane. The whole town turned out. There was a massive screen in the centre of town, a sea of green shirts and Mexican flags in front of it, and people hanging off the balconies above the square to get a view.
After a 4:30am start, two waterfalls and a Maya city, it was a pretty good way to finish the day..
A rest day in La Cañada, then Guatemala
We stayed in La Cañada, a leafy little pocket of hotels and restaurants just outside the town centre, on the road towards the ruins. It’s touristy, and it’s cute, and it feels a little bit Bali. We stayed at Hotel Ikzam, which you’ll still find listed in places under its old name, Hotel Chablis, took a rest day, and really enjoyed it.
Where we stayed · La Cañada, Palenque
Hotel Ikzam (formerly Hotel Chablis)
A small hotel with a pool and restaurant on La Cañada’s leafy main street, a short walk from its bars and cafes and about 15 minutes’ drive from the ruins.
- Rated
- 8.9 on Booking.com, from over 1,000 reviews
- Area
- La Cañada, the leafy hotel pocket between town and the ruins
- Best for
- A rest day after the transfer, before heading on to Guatemala
From Palenque, we crossed into Guatemala for Flores and Tikal. If you’re heading the same way, take that rest day first. You’ll have earned it.
Mexico Planning Cheatsheet
🚑 Should I buy travel insurance for Mexico?
Yes. Private hospitals in the big cities are genuinely good, and they will ask how you intend to pay before they treat you. Public healthcare is not a realistic option for a visitor with anything serious.
Check the activity list rather than assuming. Cenote and cave diving, volcano hikes and anything on a rented scooter are the usual exclusions, and cenote diving in particular is often treated separately from ordinary recreational diving.
I use World Nomads because you can add the adventure extras rather than hoping the base policy stretches.
🎫 Do I need a visa for Mexico?
Probably not. Most Western nationalities get up to 180 days visa-free, though the officer decides the number and it is increasingly common to be given far less than the maximum. Check the stamp before you walk away.
Mexico has largely phased out the paper FMM tourist card at airports in favour of a passport stamp. At land borders you still stop at the INM office yourself, and you pay the DNR (Derecho de No Residente) of roughly 700 pesos, about US$40. Fly in and it is already bundled into your airfare.
Heads up: keep whatever proof you have that the DNR was paid. Travellers regularly report being asked to pay it a second time when leaving overland, particularly at the Belize border. Also ignore every FMM website that asks for money. The only official one is inm.gob.mx.
💉 Do I need any vaccinations for Mexico?
Nothing exotic. Be current on the routine ones, and Hepatitis A and typhoid are the two worth asking your GP about if you plan to eat the way you should be eating, which is to say in markets and at street stalls.
Dengue is present on both coasts and in the tropical south. There is no vaccination you will realistically get, so it comes down to repellent, especially around dawn and dusk.
💵 How do you pay for things in Mexico?
Pesos, and more cash than you expect. Cards work in restaurants, hotels and supermarkets in any city, but the mercados, the comedores inside them, colectivos and small-town everything are cash only. The best food in the country is almost entirely cash only.
Use bank ATMs rather than the free-standing ones in convenience stores, and always decline when the machine offers to convert to your home currency. That conversion is where the money goes.
I use a Wise debit card for this, which gets the real exchange rate instead of the bank’s.
🚌 What’s the public transport like in Mexico?
Excellent, and one of the real pleasures of travelling here.
- ADO and its sister brands run comfortable long-distance coaches across the south. Book a day or two ahead in high season.
- Colectivos, shared vans and taxis, cover the short hops for a few pesos. They leave when full rather than on a timetable.
- DiDi rather than Uber in Oaxaca, where it has better coverage and lower fares.
Heads up: on overnight buses, treat anything in the overhead rack or the hold as gone. Thefts on the long night routes through the south are common enough that we and five other people off the same bus were robbed on one journey.
📲 How do I get internet, data or wifi in Mexico?
Telcel has the best coverage by a distance, and a prepaid SIM is cheap. Take your passport, buy it at a Telcel shop rather than the airport, and have them set it up in front of you.
If you would rather not deal with any of that, an Airalo eSIM works the moment you land. It costs more than a local SIM and I still use one for the first few days of a trip.
✈️ What’s the best site to buy flights to Mexico?
I use Skyscanner to compare routes, then book directly with the airline once I know what I want. Mexico City is usually the cheapest way in. Cancun is the obvious entry for the Yucatan, and Oaxaca is an easy short hop from Mexico City if you want to start in the south.
💧 Can you drink the water in Mexico?
The official answer is no, and that is the answer to plan around. Buy the big garrafon bottles, which every shop sells and every rental has a stand for.
Honestly, we drank the tap water in Oaxaca for a week and were completely fine. That is one city and two stomachs though, not advice, and the water quality varies enormously by state and by building. If you want to drink from the tap, filter or treat it first.
I carry Aquatabs and a Brita filter bottle, which saves buying a bottle every few hours and is genuinely useful anywhere rural.
