Uxmal Mayn Ruins and Haciendas

Today, Jacinthe decided that she wanted to go visit the Uxmal Mayan ruins. We walked to Santa Lucia Park where there is a Taxi stand. With the help of another taxi driver who was using his phone to translate what we wanted to do, we manage to get our plans across at come to a price of $1500 pesos for the day or about $100 Canadian. At home point the taxi driver put some thing in his phone and google said you want to go to a gay bar, well we all laughed.

It was about 45 minute drive to Uxmal and we got there around 8:45. We paid our entrance fees about 250 pesos each and hired a guide for another 800 pesos. We toured around Uxmal for about 2 hours with the last 30 minutes without the guide. The guide was very good and spoke English very well. Lots of information and at time possibly a bit too much. At one point my $2.00 panama hat flew away and the guide climbed down the ruins where we were to get it even after we told him it was a cheapo hat and to leave it there. The ruins are very beautiful here and you get to walk on the platform and get a real good appreciation of them.

Our first view, impressive

45 degrees stairs

The back on the first building

Lots of things to do with the Mayan calendar. 9 of this, 13 of that etc..

Mayan graffiti or signature????

one of 4 building surrounding a large square

Details

Throne

View of other building from the platform

Panorama of the square

This area is hilly and there are no cenotes for water. Holes were first dug out to use the material to make cement. The holes were made water tight. When the heavy rain came, the water was collected for the 6 months of no rain. 1000s of these existed.

reservoir for water.

We skipped climbing this one

These walls are self supporting if one falls the other stays up.

View of the main square and the main temple

A picture of me, I do exist

The only Mayan temple with rounded corners

Our next stop was the chocolate museum. They had about 8 Mayan houses with displays and information in them, most of it in Spanish, so mostly looking at the displays. We did attend a small Mayan ceremony to pray for water. We also had a taste for the unsweetened cocoa drink. They had some cage animal/birds which said they had been rescued but could not be released back in the wild as they would not survive. Very sad to see especially the large cat which just kept walking around in circles, the space was much too small for him.

Cocoa plant

The next stop was at a hacienda for lunch. We had a great lunch and some even better margaritas. They served us a beet dip along with salsa for our chip and dip. Will try to make some at home this summer. We explored the hacienda afterwards. It still had equipment from when it was in production. There was also a cenote where sparrows had their nest. The area was used for concerts.

Feed for his animals

Our last stop was another hacienda bit we did not stay too long as it was now over 35 degrees with full sun. Even Lisa complained that it was too warm, I have a recording of that. It used to be the largest hacienda with 1000s of acres. We stopped at a grocery store on the way home as it was still less than the time we had paid for. We stayed home tonight and did not go out.

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