The next morning we started early for a long and exciting day. Our goal was to visit the Mayan sites on the Ruta Puuc - the Route of the Mayan cities built in the Puuc style. These are the cities of Kabah, Sayil, Labna and Xlapak. We ended up skipping Xlapak so we could see the more famous and impressive site of Mayapan instead. Edzna and Oxkintoc were earlier examples of Puuc architecture, but it was at these four main sites (Kabah, Sayil, Labna and Xlapak) that Puuc style achieved it greatest expression during the Classical era. Although Uxmal is today the most famous Puuc city, Uxmal did not achieve its prominence until the Terminal Classical era of the Maya.

Curiously, Kabah has a Mexican highway right through the center of the site. You park on the west side of the road and cross over to see the buildings on the east side. But the famous Kabah Arch is actually further west of the parking lot, there is no sign indicating that it is there. We knew it was there from the map in our guidebook.

From the Rough Guide to the Yucatan:

Each Puuc site has its unique characteristics, but they also share marked similarities in architectural and artistic technique, religious symbolism, hieroglyphic writing, and settlement patterns - hardly surprising since there were great causeways (sacbeobs) linking the main centers. Puuc architectural style is characterized by buildings of classical proportions, decorated with broad stone mosaic friezes of geometric patterns, or designs so stylized and endlessly repeated as to become almost abstract. The face of what may be Chac, the rain god, is everywhere. Chac must have been more crucial here than almost anywhere, because Uxmal and the other Puuc sites have no cenotes or other natural sources of water, relying instead on artificially created underground cisterns called choltunes.

All the graphic images are my own design, but the textured background is taken from a site, EOS development, that offers non-profit users free use of their graphics. Click below to visit their site.