Best Traditional Mexican Chiapas: San Cristóbal de las Casas, Palenque UNESCO 1987, Yaxchilán, Bonampak, Sumidero Canyon and Chiapas Deep Heritage Tour Destinations
Browse more guides: Mexico travel | Americas destinations TL;DR Chiapas sits in Mexico's far south, packed against the Guatemalan border, and it does what almost no other Mexican state manages: it pairs serious living indigenous cultures with first-rank Maya archaeology and wild jungle in one travel circuit. San Cristóbal de las Casas is the highland anchor at 2,200 metres, founded in 1528, today a Pueblo Mágico with Tzotzil and Tzeltal markets, the church of San Juan Chamula where photographs are forbidden, and a long history as the political heart of the 1994 Zapatista uprising. Palenque, the UNESCO inscribed site from 1987, gives you Pakal the Great's tomb under the Temple of the Inscriptions, a 30 square kilometre jungle-buried city, and the wildest setting of any major Maya ruin. From there you cross deeper into the Lacandon Jungle to Yaxchilán, reachable only by boat along the Usumacinta River from Frontera Corozal, and to Bonampak, where the 8th-century murals discov...