Merida to Uxmal Ruins…

The time came to leave Chichen Itza, I’d seen all I wanted to see there, got sick (with a cold and cough) then got well, and it was time to move on to Merida. There is only one RV park there so that’s where I stayed. After a 10 day stay in Piste’, nice but a very small town just a mile from Chichen Itza, I was looking for a large grocery store to restock and perhaps sample some nightlife in town. I don’t mean to diss Piste’ but the fruit and veggies were pretty bad most stores I’d gone to. Though in Piste’ I was able to find a bike repair shop through a store owner who spoke a little English and got my bike adjusted and lubed. The salty sea air I’d gone through had done a number on the metal parts and there was rust all over the chain, and an accident had bent the front wheel rim. They straightened my front wheel and lubed the chain, took around 2 hours, all for $6.04 US.

When I arrived at Merida, the RV park was asking $23 per night and it seemed expensive after the places I’d stayed with the same facilities for much, much, less. Like at Piste’ it was only $7.68 US per night, with all the same services PLUS sewer, and this place only had a dump station, that I couldn’t find. You kind of get use to lower prices and when someone slaps on a huge profit margin like this, it kind of bothers you. But, I needed to shop, they probably had higher taxes to pay, and there was a big store nearby, so I stayed. Rode my bike over to the store and did my shopping, struggled back with two bags hanging from my handlebars. Not the night for bar hopping, to tired after all that shopping.

This is where I parked in Merida, they have around 80 spaces for RVs and I was the only one there…

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Next day, I left for the Uxmal (Oosh-mahl) ruins, #2 in the big 4 of ruins. Chichen Itza is #1. I arrived around 2:30 in the afternoon and parked right on the site grounds, that’s my RV off in the distance. It was a boondocking place, no electric or whatever, but one of the RVs there had WiFi that I accessed for a couple hours when the genset was running…
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There are two large interesting and comfortable hotels here (I toured them), with restaurants and all, one of them is a Club Med, and I have to say, if you’re looking for a long quiet week in Mexico visiting ruins while staying in some first class hotels, this place is really worth a visit…fly into Cancun, take a bus over to Merida, rent a car then travel down here, it’s a short drive from Merida. Stay at one of the hotels, go visit Uxmal Ruins (the entrance is just a few feet from the hotels) then go on the ‘Puuc ancient ruins route’ that’s very near here. And there is a very large cave to tour as well. Probably 2 days at least visiting Uxmal then 2-3 days doing the Puuc Route at a slow pace so a rental car would be best travel method. Very much worth the effort…
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They had all these flowering plant and bushes all over the place, my ancient camera doesn’t do them justice:

But I enjoyed them:

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After wandering around for a couple hours, having dinner, and resting, at 6:30pm, I entered the Uxmal ruins grounds to watch the night light show. I’d heard it was interesting from some of the people staying in the parking lot, and I rented the headphones, with translation into English to improve my understanding of the ruins with what I thought would be an educational talk. Turned out that it was designed and written by art majors or something. Lots of singing and music and the same lights going off and on casting onto the same ruins. I should have stayed in the RV. Waste of time. But so inexpensive as to be worth it. Now that I’ve been to one of the light shows down here I know that it’s a waste of time and I’ll skip them from now on.
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The next day, I get my ticket and walk into the second best preserved and restored Mayan ruin in Mexico (or so the books say) for my second time. This is my forth visit to a Mayan ruin and this one is impressive. It’s not so much the size of the place as it is preserved artifacts still attached to buildings. I tried to get the best shots I could but my camera has decided to start absorbing moisture from the jungle so I’ve had to delete some of the most obvious shots where the lens is fogged. But there are nearly 100 pictures of the place so I hope you enjoy them, and the work that it took to get them…

This one is a discreet shot of the pyramid as I approached it along the road the Mayan built over 1200 years ago. It’s as impressive now as it must have been back then:

And a shot as you enter the grand plaza:

Off to the right of the grand pyramid:

I’m going to stop telling you about all these buildings because, really, no one knows what they were used for though educated guesses are made, (exceptions noted). And I don’t believe all those that say every single building had religious or governmental purpose. In this place I’d swear that some of the buildings were surrounding a used car lot, or the equivalent, another building seemed to me to be for meat storage next to an ancient disco place, there is a plaza I’d swear was a shopping mall, and other places that seem to be cloistered homes where the upper classes just chilled after a hard day of whipping the peasants.

I think that too many of these ancient buildings are called religious buildings or administrative buildings. Many buildings seemed to be public works that would be equivalent in design, space and positioning to mere shopping centers of today. In a society that had the ability, wealth, and leisure time to build sport arena’s, shopping centers are not that much of a stretch. That’s my opinion. Prove me wrong.

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This is one of those Mayan arches I’m fond of showing…since it points to the lack of a partial circle arch, used in the Med area for a thousand years previous to this…

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Here we see one of the rooms the Mayan’s built inside of their buildings. You never see much more then this, sometimes two rooms of this size would be connected by a large doorway but I never saw three rooms connected together unless it was a single wide low roofed building, like a series of shops linked together:

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Here’s one of the few ‘overhang’ walls that the Mayan’s built. Because of their building technique, this would have been a triumph of the work crew and designer. And it’s still standing 1200 years later. The dog had started to follow me around the site. I didn’t have any treats so eventually he drifted off.

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As can be seen, this quad is where one ball court could have been, except for the remnants of a building there in the middle of it. It’s named the Nunery or something similar by the Spaniards that visited the place. I think this was just a shopping mall, which would explain all the single rooms spaced around the place, that look like little business places, and the building in the courtyard perhaps came after the city had fallen into disrepair…someone built their house in the courtyard because it was neat there, but that’s just my opinion, and they don’t hand out brochures here so what do I know anyway. But it had the look & feel of a large, open air shopping mall:

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Now here’s a real ball court, too obvious to mistake it for anything else. Note those sloped areas on either side? That’s where the spectators sat during the game. They also sat on top of the structure. Then the players would score by putting the ball into a stone circle shown in a following picture. The crowd must have been pretty active during the game, having to move out of the way and such:

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One of the very large lizards that live around here:

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I’m leaving tomorrow and don’t know when I’ll be back on line…thanks for visiting.