After our morning visit to Oxkintok, we drove to the site of Uxmal. I knew this would be one of the highlights of the trip - all the pictures from Uxmal show a spectacular site with buildings covered with ornate decorations. Uxmal did not disappoint - it was an amazing place to visit. Uxmal was the greatest Mayan city in the Puuc region, and it has some of the best preserved (or best restored) examples of Mayan artwork in the Puuc style. We spent the whole afternoon checking out all the structures, including going out to the seldom visited cemetary structure (like most Mexican sites, there is no map or documentation provided to visitors, so unless you have brought a guidebook with a map, you won't find the Cemetary Complex). We saw several other buildings that looked in need of restoration work - I especially wonder what is under the mound called the South Temple - it looks like a pyramid as tall as the Great Pyramid.

We explored Uxmal, then crossed the street to check into the Hacienda Hotel at Uxmal. This is a luxurious hotel literally across the street from the Uxmal ruins. It has some really nice grounds, including a pool and some nicely landscaped flowers. When it got dark, we took our flashlights and walked back to the Uxmal site to watch the lightshow (which is automatically included in the price of admission). It was fun to be back in Uxmal at night. The presentation is all in Spanish, and seems overly long, but it was cool to see the buildings at night. It was clear, so I could see the stars overhead.

I took photographs of the signs posted around the Uxmal structures. Here is what the text at the entrance sign said:

Uxmal is located in the Santa Elena Valley to the south of the Puuc hill country in the southwestern part of the Yucatan peninsula. The zone was first settled in 500 B.C., but it wasn't until the ninth and twelfth centuries A.D. that it became the seat of Mayan political and economic power in the Puuc region.

It is estimated that a population of around twenty-five thousand inhabitants was distributed throughout a territory of 37.5 square kilometers with enormous agricultural potential, but lacking in permanenet water sources. For this reason the Mayas constructed chultunes, or underground cisterns, and a complex drinking water system, including aguadas and bukteoobob for the utilization of rainwater.

The architecture at this site is one of the most authentic examples of the Puuc style. Decorative features such as the three-dimensional masks of the god Chaac, colonnades, the two-headed jaguar, and other iconographic symbols demonstrate Uxmal's position in the most important cultural and commercial circuits of the Maya Classic Era.

The walled civic-administrative area occupies an area of one kilometer from north to south and .6 kilometers from east to west. The palace-type structures are arranged around courtyards, forming quadrangles. The decoration is among the richest and most varied of all the archaeological zones, including representations of the gods, animals, dignitaries and geometric forms. There are also residential structures in the surrounding area.

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.