November 2001

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Uxmal from the Great Pyramid

House of the Magician

Nunnery

Wednesday 21 - Thursday 22 November

After a sound sleep in the northern part of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve we continued to Uxmal, one of the most important Maya sites. This place is really impressive with many rooms and carvings to see. We are getting more on the tourist trail now, there were big tourist groups and the admission fee at 85 pesos is more than double the usual 35 pesos. Still, its well worth seeing and there is the added bonus of loads of iguanas hanging about.

View of the Magician House through a doorway

Palace of the Governers

Afterwards it was a fairly easy drive north to Merida, founded by the Spanish in 1542 which has some fine colonial architecture and an excellent little Maya museum. In a Pemex petrol station we bumped into Herman and Candelaria Zapp, a mad Argentinian couple who are driving up from Buenos Aires to Alaska in a 1928 Graham Paige banger. Definitely the most wicked travellers we've met. We all ended up eating out, gaining loads of useful tips and then spending a noisy, mosquito bitten night behind the Pemex.

We had an amusing incident while trying to find an estacionmento (car park) in the centre. We entered the narrow gates of one such establishment and an old guy working there said he'd work out a special price for us for the night while we parked up. When we returned to him the special price was 200 pesos. Normally its no more than 30 pesos. His explanation was that its 400 pesos to stay in a hotel so we were saving money. Naturally we refused to pay and as we returned to the landy to drive out he became really agressive and told his mate to shut the gates. Another guy came over and insisted that we pay 6 pesos as they had to write a ticket for our car. T got really angry and refused to pay anything while B manoevered the landy into the entrance and blocked anybody entering or leaving! The police were called and we still refused to pay. By this time 3 cars had not been able to enter and 2 couldn't leave. The guy was begging us to pay the 6 pesos so we relented and left tittering to ourselves.

Wicked travellers

In Merida, the new...

...the old...

...and the very old

Stone used for offering hearts to the gods

Things people do for vanity

We drove east out of Merida towards yet another big Mayan site, this time Chichen Itza. Before we arrived a quick detour to see one of the many natural water cisterns (cenote in Spanish) into which the Maya used to throw sacrifices and other offerings to the gods. This one is 36m deep and is connected to a network of underground rivers and more cenotes.

Cenote Xtojil

 

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