Maya, Maya - Continuing the Puuc Route

So, you've toured Uxmal; now you're wrung out and strung out from the jungle heat and all the awesomeness, and you need a place to crash. This region has several lodging options, but you'd be nuts to stay anywhere except the Flycatcher Inn, near the Uxmal ruins in beautiful downtown Santa Elena. The Flycatcher's proprietors and their staff will treat you very well. Ask them anything about the region - ruins, restaurants, artisans, history - they know it all. However long you think you'll stay? Double the time - we booked 3 nights, stayed for five, left wanting more.

Santa Elena town itself is worth spending at least one day to look around. There are a couple of nice restaurants for dinner, and the town has great tiendas where I discovered how the local ladies keep their brilliant embroidered white cotton shift dresses (huipiles) looking so sparkly-white no matter how hard or dusty their work. (These women are so tough and so classy you don't dare take a pic of them if they see you.) I NOW HAVE THEIR SECRET. (Hint: lye soap and a washboard. IT WORKS.) Santa Elena has a small museum next to their church up on the hill (or is it an old Mayan platform, hmmmm?) that is certainly worth your time.

The Flycatcher is a good base from which to explore not just Santa Elena and Uxmal, but also a series of ruins that stretches out along a nicely-paved highway south and east of town. You may want to split your tours of these sites into two days (like I'm going to do in these here posts), but here's the list. I give you: Kabah, Sayil, Xlapak ("shla-PAK") and Labnah. And also, too, the Loltun Cave.

These sites are all fairly small; each one might take no more than an hour or so of your time. They are located along a 20-mile stretch of present-day highway that starts at Kabah on Highway 261 just south of Santa Elena, then turns left (east) onto a well-paved, well-signed secondary highway toward the other sites. (In fact, Highway 261 bisects the ruins of Kabah which, Jeez, you'd think could have been avoided. Wonder what the road crews dug up.) Anyway.

I'm not basing my opinion on anything resembling a fact, but it sure seems when you tour these ruins that they were a series of buildings (civic centers? Religious stopovers? Community colleges?) that were part of one large urban center back in the day, much like, say, San Francisco is connected to Daly City and San Rafael, or how downtown Seattle is connected to Ballard and the Fremont district. Instead of BART or Metro, the Mayans used sacbes.

OK, let's start with Kabah. It actually connects with Uxmal, some 10 miles to the north, via a sacbe through what is now jungle which just adds to the mystery of it all. Just off the highway, across from the parking area, is Kabah's main platform and palace buildings. The central structure is the Codz Poop, the facade of which - from floor to roof - features some 250 stone masks with large hooked noses. Similar stone masks form the steps up and into the palace's interior. The way these stone masks were erected - as well as the stone friezes, mosaics and facades of the other Mayan ruins I've been posting about - allows sunlight to illuminate all the angles and surfaces for maximum effect. Coe speculates that the large hooked noses of these masks might have held lanterns so at night the whole edifice was lit up. Man that must have been something.

Kabah is a good site to visit because restoration is still ongoing and you can see the archaeologists' approach. Here, GB inspects piles of carved stone, to be pieced back together by untold numbers of grad students some day. And over here, GB observes a palace interior in which numbered pieces will be matched up with their corresponding section of wall.

As you look in every direction from the excavated buildings and walk along the site's trails, you see many more structures that are still covered by jungle. Just waiting for the right archaeologist with the proper level of funding.

Across the highway and past the parking area is the second half of Kabah with its Great Temple (sadly, unrestored rubble) and - for me - one of the most striking parts of this site: the vaulted gateway and the sacbe leading to Uxmal. This is a typical sacbe: an elevated causeway, about 30 feet wide, that was originally paved with crushed white limestone. It must have glowed in the light of a full moon, no street lights necessary. It impresses me because of its size: though it could to this day accomodate two lanes of car traffic plus have room left over for a bike path, it was never used for wheeled vehicles. The Mayans knew of the wheel but never used it for carts or wagons because they had no draft animals to pull them. These sacbes were built for human foot traffic only. Humans carried all the cargo. To me the size of the sacbes and the absence of vehicles suggests that there were a LOT of people (travelers, merchants, religious pilgrims and the entrepreneurs who supported them all) constantly on the move among the various towns andtemple complexes. Sacbes like this radiate out from all the old Yucatan sites to all the other old Yucatan siteslike a giant, well-planned spiderweb.

I am overwhelmed by the coolness of it all.

Next post: Sayil, Xlapak, Labnah and Loltun Cave.

m

Comments

[Charles Rhyne]

Enjoyed your observations and comments.
You might be interested in this website from Reed College
http://academic.reed.edu/uxmal/

[sailnmuffin]

Prof. Rhyme, I really appreciate your comment. Especially because that link you provided gives essential historical detail that this here chatty blog o' mine can't include. Between the two of us, I hope we succeed in getting more people to see Uxmal and the Puuc Region for themselves! Thanks again - m