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Thursday evening: Kabah, Santa Elena, Uxmal
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Another road sign – 2 ruins and a cave.
We’ll see the cave tomorrow, and the straight-ahead ruin today.
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Kabah
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Entrance to Kabah. The road passes through the middle of this ancient city
(which makes me think that perhaps this is also the route of the ancient road.)
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From the entrance, this is the left side of the two buildings we visited.
On the right is a retaining wall which supports a large terrace
in front of the other building.
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↓ Building 1 ↓
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This is the right side and where we started; I’ll call it Building One.
We arrived a half hour before closing and, moving fast,
only had time to explore these two.
Here we are standing up on the high terrace mentioned above.
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↓Info about Kabah's underground water storage. ↓
The terrace is the front porch, but inside it is also a water reservoir.
In the photo above ↑ we are walking on top of the cistern shown in the sign.
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Close up of Chaac’s repeated face. Chaac is the Maya rain god and
this palace of his oversees this rain collection system.
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The only full nose still in place here.
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There was a whole pile of Chaac's noses.
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Joe standing on Chaac's head which serves as a step
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There are piles of rubble -- this stone is in a feather motif.
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Some individual stones.
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I think this site had the most elaborately
and finely carved stones that we saw on the whole trip.
Rosette motif.
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Statues atop a high wall on the back side of building one.
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Feather motif and rosette-carved stones in place. (Detail from the wall above.)
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Doorway decorated with 4 bas relief panels (only 2 visible here).
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One of the doorway panels showing 2 people fighting over scarce resources.
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Close-up of same.
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↓ Building 2 ↓
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Under the plants and rubble of this “hillside” is one end of building 2.
Signs request no climbing on top of this apparently hollow chamber; roofs cave in.
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This is the excavated end of building 2.
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Josh, Mary, and Joe in the plaza in front of building 2.
Go back to first photo in this series to see
that this plaze is a man-made terrace high above the surrounding landscape.
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Josh on building 2. Also shows fairly large rooms formed by false arch vaulting.
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Pillars at plaza level.
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Backside of building 1.
See the roped off doorway with the bas relief on the left,
and the late afternoon light through the windows, or “roof comb?”
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In the town of Santa Elena and the Flycatcher Inn
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Part of Mary and Josh’s suite at our home for tonight.
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Outside – a lovely garden at the Flycatcher Inn.
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Our spacious room comes with a hammock,
though we didn’t use it.
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Tribes of children were roaming about gathering donations for their church
(a Christmas holiday activity) on the streets of Santa Elena.
Uxmal, the only heavily used site we've seen since day one (in Tulum).
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The grand entrance.
We went to the evening light show.
It was the only way we were going to get to see the famous Uxmal at all.
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The Magician’s Temple is beyond the near wall.
This is the big thing at Uxmal.
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The light show was definitely disappointing.
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We recognized Chaac’s nose on the building’s corners.
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Numbered stones
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In the public restrooms at this big tourist site --
a slot of a trough instead of wash basins. I’ve never seen this before.
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Next, Loltun Cave -- bright and early Friday morning.
Only one day left!
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