Puuc Hills – Uxmal & Kabah Prints

If you’re ever planning a trip into the Yucatan to see ruins, you should really try to get into the Puuc Hills.  From Mérida, Uxmal and Kabah are an easy day trip, but there are more Puuc Hill ruins to see to the extent I wish I had more time when I visited to travel a bit further afield.  None-the-less, the ruins I did see were excellent.  The ruins in this area of the country have the distinction of having a style of Maya architecture named for them.  They are also different from their low land counterparts in not being built over Cenotes (sink hole access points to the underground rivers of the Yucatan).  Instead, the Maya built large cisterns in these cities to capture rain water for the dry months.  If the theory that droughts were largely responsible for the end of the Maya way of life, these people were probably the first to suffer.

Uxmal, the first place I visited is still touristed but not nearly so heavily as Chichen Itza.  People were living at Uxmal around 500 AD.  It flourished for sometime as the main city in the region, but it’s star dropped after the fall of Chichen Itza.  By the time the Spanish arrived, Uxmal was already largely abandoned.

Uxmal - The Nuns Quadrangle

This is part of a large complex of buildings adjacent to the main pyramid at Uxmal.  The first Spaniards to study this location thought that it looked like a nuns convent, hence the name.  It’s believed that these buildings may have been a school for princes.  This was the last building of the quadrangle, note the masks on the corner, these are masks of Chac Mool, the rain god, and are on each corner of this building.  Also note the elaborated decorations.  This is typical of the Puuc style.  The prominence of Chac Mool highlights the importance of rain to the people living here.

Palacio del Gobernador - Uxmal, Mexico

This is another of the buildings at Uxmal, said to be one of the best examples of the Puuc style.  Built in the 9th an 10th centuries, it was probably an administration building for the region.  As with other Maya buildings, it is aligned with the heavens, the main door lines up with the planet Venus.

Inheritance of the Maya

The site of Kabah is yet less touristed and there’s been far less reconstruction here. There was a city here as early as the 3rd century which reached it’s height around the 8th.  By the 11th century, the site was abandoned.  This palace appears to have had 30 or more rooms and is remarkably intact considering how long it’s been since it was inhabited.

Uxmal is a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Kabah is not listed, but should be on the list of anyone who appreciates the ruins of our past cultures.

More photo prints from both sites are available at my Mexico Prints.