He became the ruler of the ancient Mayan city of Palenque (pronounced Pah-LANE-kay) in the year 615 A.D..

He was 12 years old. His name was Pakal…..or Lord Sun Shield in Mayan.

Did he ever know how to hang around.

He would rule Palenque with an iron hand for the next 69 years until his death in 683. His tomb is inside the main temple at the site.

We trekked up and down the many steps of this magnificent ruin located in the increasingly touristy city of Palenque in Mexico’s state of Chiapas.

Pakal’s city was “discovered” in 1773. So far, 26 “buildings” have been completely dug out. About 90 are deemed as “visitable” by tourists. Amazingly, there are more than 1,100 buildings on the site. More than a thousand known structures still lie beneath the Mexican jungle.

It takes an average of 15 years to completely excavate one building. At this rate, it will be another 3,000 years or so before they’re all reclaimed.

Our tour guide says the population of this place at its height would have been between 30 and 40 thousand.

But this is just one Mayan site. The Mayan “territory” extended through much of the southern end of Mexico, and parts of Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras, inhabited by about 5-million Mayans. Palenque is one of about 2,000 Mayan city-sites in this territory. We have visited four on this trip; Yaxchilan, Bonampak, Laconja, and Palenque, all of them in Chiapas.

Our guide took us through the forest to have a look at a couple of buildings almost totally still submerged under the jungle. He says after it rains, pieces of original Mayan pottery are often washed right into plain view. He picked up a couple of pieces from the jungle floor to prove it, too.

Our day was made a little more interesting by our chance encounter with a German tourist named Thorsten, from Munich. Four of us were sitting on a step when from behind there came a voice.

“Can you please help me?”

It was Thorsten. He had fallen on the top step, attempting to descend. As we subsequently learned, Thorsten was dealing with the aftermath of surgery to remove a brain tumour. He walked with obvious difficulty; he suffered from paralysis of his right arm and leg, and he’d lost his vision in one eye. He was with a tour group, but at this point was on his own, because he wanted to see more of the ruins…which involved descending a good number of steep, uneven stairs. Thorsten became our companion as one of our group members lent Thorsten her shoulder for the next 40 minutes or so, as we went down all those stairs to the bottom. He appreciated the help. And we admired the will of this courageous, thirty-something man.

He would not be denied.