This is Part 2 of our road trip visiting the Uxmal and Mayapan ruin sites. For part 1, click here.
For our stay in Merida I have planned a few small roadtrips to the fancy Uxmal ruins and the not so fancy Mayapan Ruins. The last few Mayan ruins we’ll visit for a while. Going further into Mexico other tribes and peoples inhabited those parts. So the next archeological site is probably not Mayan.
Mayapan is also nice
But less so, we found the Mayapan ruins to be actual ruins with most buildings reduced to just the foundations and some left over walls. Not very impressive. Entry to this site is $50MXN. The main thing to look at, to me, was the observatorium which wasn’t an observatorium. Just a out-of-place looking round building called that way. Which stood out from the other buildings for not being a square. But I forgot to take a good photo of it…
I did take a photo of the main pyramid and the plaza in front of it though.
Like the Uxmal pyramid, it’s quite tall. But not as nicely preserved. The stairs on all sides were broken and uneven. I didn’t feel like climbing that in the 35c heat.
Some people did though. I imagine their view was nice. I climbed the main building in Ek Balam a few weeks ago. It had a nice view, but also terrible stairs like this pyramid…
The plaza and its surrounding buildings were all but destroyed, fortunately this city (town?) has strong foundations or we’d never know it was here.
As you’ll notice, no roofs, almost no walls. And pretty much only some stairs (!!) and columns remain.
Not being as impressed we spent a while strolling around and headed back to Merida via some back roads. Along the way we found one last interesting thing.
The Spanish were here
In one of the rural towns we found this abandoned Spanish Hacienda. There is no gate, so anyone can just drive onto the central area and explore the yard and surrounding buildings.
The main building hiding behind the motorcycles.
And finally we arrived back in Merida at around 5PM.
