When we woke up, Jess was out. We took a shower and she was back when we got out. We were too late for the 10:40 bus to Uxmal, so we went to the station and got tickets for the noon bus.
After we bought the tickets, we went across the street to get some breakfast. The man who served us was old and had trouble moving. He did everything very slowly. Any time he did anything, Jess said, “Ay, mi vida!” He wrote really slowly and carried things one at a time. He was friendly. Colin got black coffee, Xie and Jess got café con leche. Colin got tacos de carne asada, Xie got quesadillas, and Jess got a panucho. The quesadillas were really simple — cheese inside and a dollop of a thin sour cream on top. There was also a delicious habenero salsa on the table that Xie and CM kept feeling compelled to eat, even though it made the coffee taste weird.
Uxmal was an awesome site. The buildings were a mixture of pretty renovated and pretty run down. They were somewhat spaced out, so we could just wander and see a lot of different things.
It rained a couple of times and we scrambled for shelter. After a while, we just walked around in the drizzle. At one rainy point, we ended up at the top of a really run-down and overgrown pyramid with great views out to all sides. It was fun hiding in the weedy partially-standing buildings.
It was there that Jessica spotted this gorgeous turquoise bird for the first time. Xie and CM barely saw it, but eventually we all got good glimpses. It turns out that the bird is called a Toh, or a Turquoise-Browed Motmot. The primary colors were green and turquoise, with a rusty breast and striking markings on the eyes, wings and chin. The coolest thing was the pair of feathers at the end of the tail, connected by a thin, featherless strand.
Apparently these birds are often associated with Mayan ruins, because they nest in the underground cisterns that the Mayans used to collect water. Not all sites have these cisterns. They tend to be at sites in places without access to cenotes (lakes in underground cave), like Uxmal.
There’s also a myth about how they used to be really vain about their beautiful and delicate tail, so they never shared in the work that had to be done. But then one day they were sleeping and their tail got ruined and now they have to hide out in the cisterns, ashamed.
The ruins were pretty elaborate in a lot of places with masks and serpents and lots of XXXX patterns carved in the stones that the buildings were made from. We saw a ball court with a stone hoop. Jess said that the winners of the game would be sacrificed to the gods. Although CM heard somewhere else that it was the losers who were sacrificed. The game is a kind of like soccer, in that you could move the ball with any part of your body except for your hands, and kind of like basketball with the elevated hoop that you have to get the ball through.
We learned that the rain god had big round eyes. The masks had crazy long noses that stuck out at the corners.
We had gotten conflicting information about when the bus was returning to Mérida, and we were afraid we’d be stranded. But we got lucky, and the bus did come after a nervous wait.
It was frijol con puerco night, and Jess and Beto made us a delicious dinner. Frijol con puerco was cooked pork chunks, which were added to a simmering pot of beans, along with a unique herb, _______ (we can’t remember what it was called). The herb was a little minty (and had squarish stems, but more lobed leaves) with a volatile, nosy flavor.
Beto made the salsa, which was very much like the salsa that CM’s friend Nando used to cook at his house, with seared tomatoes, garlic and onions blended with cilantro and plenty of salt. Jess had to ask him to stop adding salt, and explained that she thought that something was wrong with his taste buds, because he adds so much salt to everything. He also made a yummy, spicy condiment, which was chopped onion and habenero peppers, with salt and lime.
We sat down to eat. Each person got a dish of beans, to which we added rice, avocado, salsa and the spicy condiment. We ate the food with tortillas and drank horchata, which came from a concentrate. Super yums!
After that, we were very tired, and went to bed.
June 4, 2008 at 7:55 am
WOW – the ruins at Uxmal look really impressive! I haven’t managed to go there yet, but after seeing this I’ll definitley be paying them a visit. Great Blog post!