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Visiting a City "Three Times Rebuilt" and a Cave Called "Flower Stone"

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Yesterday was quite the adventure! We started off in Uxmal...

Uxmal comes from "Ox mal" meaning three times constructed
Pyramid of the sorcerer or Pyramid of the dwarf is a perfect example of the ornate style of Uxmal

Mouth of the Beast of the underworld

Facing the Quadrangle of the Birds

The rain god "Chaak" is found in many different forms

Excited about the arco falso an architectural invention of the Mayans

Documenting the Quadrangle of the Nuns

Smile!

Our beloved teachers

Learning about the juego de pelota, or Mayan ball game

Heading to see the House of the Turtles

Rafael sharing his knowledge

The Mayan calendar was based on 52 year cycles, and each cycle a new ruler would come to power and build over the existing pyramids, here you can see a representation of Chaak that was covered in the most recent remodelation

Taking a break at the Governors Palace

Made it to the top!

Coming back down carefully

Continuing our exploration

After getting our fill of Mayan ruins for the day, we headed to lunch in Santa Elena

We took a tour of Dona Kiki's patio to see her fruit trees, animals and methane collector which she uses as a source of renewable energy

A blurry, but happy, photo of our lunch, puchero with handmade tortillas and salpicon

Next we took a look at the museum of the pueblo. When they were renovating the church, archaeologists found that it had been used as a Mayan burial site and they recovered hundreds of skeletons. Now you can see the traditional burial arrangement right under your feet!

Some of the corpses were preserved so well in this dry area that they became mummified

We took a look at the church while we were there


And gained a few new passengers for the ride back!

Next stop: the caves of Loltun!

Beginning the descent

Our guide Don Frederico giving us some tips before we enter the cave

Loltun means "flower stone" in Mayan

this cave is well lit so you can see all the details






Here we found some "instruments," both stalactites are hollow and make a certain tone when you hit them, one says "loool" and the other "tuuun"
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