MESMERISED BY MEXICO

There’s a moment, around dawn, when the early-morning mist begins to burn off with the first of the sun’s rays. Sensing the new day, howler monkeys start whooping in chorus, setting off an orchestra of birds, from parrots to toucans.

Sitting at the top of the pyramid-like Temple of the Inscriptions, and gazing over the leaves of steamy verdant jungle dotted with cedars and sapodilla, I feel like I’m on the set of an Indiana Jones movie.

It’s my third morning at Palenque, a vast archaeological zone in the Mexican state of Chiapas. And if I could come back