Uxmal Ruins!!

/ Ed Armstrong
We started the day driving out of Merida. On the way out of town, we drove through a cemetery and our guide described how the community cares for their dead. He said that today it is becoming more popular to cremate someone when they die because it is much less expensive than burial.

Some of the plots in the cemetery are quite elaborate and carefully groomed by family members.

This is the famous Uxmal ruins!! This is the backside of the pyramid. It has been restored and now is in much better shape than the ruins we have seen the previous few days. It was incredibly impressive to look at this massive pyramid!!

This photo shows the number of steps that the Mayans needed to climb to get to the top of the pyramid!!

It is unique to have pillars in a Mayan structure. Some researchers hypothesize that the pillars may have been added at a later time.

This is the front side of Uxmal that faces a courtyard. It is an amazingly impressive ruin!!

This side of the courtyard had quite a few pillars!!

This is an adjacent building within the Uxmal ruins. There were buildings on all 4 sides of this courtyard!!

This is the north side of the courtyard buildings and it was the tallest of the 4 buildings.

This is an original Mayan sculpture that is an owl. It is amazing to see the detail in all the buildings!!

This sculpture is designed to look like lattice work. The red color behind the lattice is original Mayan colors of paint.

The snake is a recent addition of Mayan history of a “cult.” This sculpture shows two different snakes that are intertwined. There is a face of a man coming out of the mouth of the snake which had “mystical” meaning. The rattlesnakes tail and rattle are shown above the head.

This is the third day in a row that we have seen an iguana crawling along a ridge of Mayan ruins!! This guy is much smaller and has a black coloring under his mouth.

This is the Mayan arch. The Mayans are famous for their capstones seen in the top of the arch.

The corner of this building shows many Mayan glyphs. This are original to the Mayan architecture. They represent mouths and eyes of creatures depicted by the Mayans.

This another Mayan ball court. This is larger than the one we saw a few days ago in another Mayan ruin. This court shows the large ring on the right panel that was used in the games.

This shows a house of a wealthy person (usually royalty) living on the compound of the Mayan king.

This is the massive house of the Mayan king. It is enormous!! We can climb these steps today, but the large pyramid is now off limits for tourists to climb.

This is an original Mayan drawing on the ceiling of a Mayan house on the Uxmal compound. A parrot can be seen in the lower right section of the drawing. This is one of the capstones of the building.

After a fantastic time exploring the Uxmal ruins, we next drove to the nearby Mayan chocolate factory!!

A woman provided a demonstration how they went from the raw cacao plant to make the final product. Here, she is mixing the the chocolate to make a drink that we were able to sample. I thought it tasted much better after adding sugar and cinnamon!! John added everything, including chili powder and allspice.

I bought two chocolate bars made at the facility after testing some of their samples. One was dark chocolate and another was milk chocolate. I passed on the coffee and chili flavors.