The Puuc Route of the Yucatan

Pyramid of the Dwarf, Uxmal

A region in the Yucatan of rare hills (Puuc in Mayan) has a network of beautiful classical Mayan cities. The Puuc Route once teemed with many thousands of inhabitants, mostly tillers of the land in a dense region, around 600-1000 AD. The Puuc Region had extensive trade networks in the Classical era, and exported salt, honey, cotton feathers and wax for scarce items like obsidian. It flourished thanks to the development of underground water cisterns to catch the rain, called chultunes, which could hold up to 35,000 liters of water each.

So we headed south from Merida over the riverless limestone peninsula, passing truckloads of doomed pigs. Hawks soared and a few vultures stood by the road, sometimes even at bus stops.

Serpents of the sky, hiboux of the night

Uxmal

The beautiful Uxmal, "thrice built" center of power had no crowds to distract from the pale, cleanly restored architecture gleaming like the snakeskin it is meant to represent. It once covered 12 square km, with 20,000 people, but now we see only the civic and religious center. It had been built, legend had it, by a dwarf who defeated the old ruler with magic, aided by his mother the witch. The pyramid of the dwarf stands in silent dignity over the elaborately decorated courtyards on its west, and the intertwined levels of buildings like man-made hills. Inside the courtyards are beautifully faced buildings, with a gentler narrative than Chichen Itza and much more beautiful: birds, two-headed serpents and the mosaic "jalousies," diamond patterns resembling serpent scales, large masks, many of Chaac the rain god. Inside, under the peaked Mayan vaults, is coolness, guano, iguanas and sometimes the sense of an intimate, dangerous presence. The "Birds' Courtyard" has clearly defined themes on each of its four sides, of serpents, hiboux for the day and the night, and of course Chaac. Another cluster is around the

The "Cemetery", Uxmal

Governor's palace on whose roof is a serpentine design made of Chaac masks. W e climbed the Great Temple Pyramid to the Temple of Macaw where we could the priest's head emerging from the mouth of the terrestrial monster on two undamaged corners, a common symbolism. A simple and dignified House of the Turtles (900-1000 AD) showed the esteem toward these important animals, part of the Aquatic Cult.

We found an unadvertised area called "The Cemetery", a latter day name, decorated with skulls, bones, eyeballs and other

macabre symbols. But no explanation for it was given.

Temple of the Masks, Kabah

The second power was Kabah (The Powerful Hand), occupied since 500 AD, but mainly built later. The temple of the masks (decorated with 300 Chaac masks) bears systematic decorative motifs. Snake elements, like rattles, compose the Chaac faces. You can climb it to find 1 1/2 magnificent nobles, larger than life, standing at the decorative roof level. Only the Northern, aristocratic site has begun to be excavated. Across the road of Kabah is its famous Arch,

which has slight remains of red handprints, and the beginning of a sacbe (earth road) to Uxmal.

Lords of Kabah

Not far off is the third great city of Sayil, the densest area in the Puuc where 10,000 once lived, as well as a suburb of 7,000, in 700-1000 AD. Its glorious palace looks almost Minoan, with a roseate, monumental surface decorated with columns and masks. The 90 rooms (and 8 chultunes) could have housed 350 inhabitants but its actual history is not well understood. Flocks of red swallows lived inside the palace, spread their rusty wings and zoomed around us. They slithered up trees, lizard-like, as we walked further on the raked red soil to see more fragmentary buildings--a mirador with semi-collapsed rooms and a ragged comb on top, a half buried temple with blackened doorways, one with glyphs--a mount of rubble

Palace of Sayil

surmounted by remnants of a classic Puuc temple.

For lunch we went to the little village of Santa Elena there are, unusually, a "Bed and Breakfast" and a "Flycatcher's Inn" among others. We ate at a comfortable restaurant Chaac Mol filled with round women and children, geese and roosters, the cook over an open air fire. The large menu included vegetarian, the women were infinitely sweet, and we chatted with a bright eyed couple from northern New Mexico. (They later told us that lunch led to La Turista---but that was one day when my stomach was fine.)

Xlapac

These archeological sites seem all to have live-in guardians who keep sweet dogs, and close down at 4:30, so we attempted only one more that day, Xclapac, free of charge. In the red woods of this land of rare fertile soil, under slender rustling trees of mangroves and mimosas, the afternoon's fierceness had abated. We had a pleasant stroll to see a palace in Puuc style, a classical austere style compared with the hectic Chaac masks of the Chene style. The Chaac masks survived through the eras, along with other motifs such as a zigzag named for the centipede, chimez. The other Americans pulled in as we were pulling out, as the guardian watched TV without moving, and we drove off through gentle forest preserves to reach the

highway.

The Arch of Labna

On another day, the Mayan city of Labna cast an immediate spell. A wind blew the heat along under the bluest sky and trees creaked and spoke while palm leaves beat out rhythms in their dry restlessness. The palace, in its chaotic condition, was still beautifully, stately Puuc. We crossed the old plaza, on a sacbe, to the mirador, high on a pile of stones, that once held ball players standing on its high comb. Labna's arch is famous, with its remnants of decor, as is the Temple of Columns.

Nearby are the caves of Loltun, caves that had been inhabited from 10,000 years ago through the 19th c. Bones of the Pleistocene era, of mammals that have been extinct 14,000 years, have been found there. Pottery remains date from 1000BC-1250 AD. At the entrance is an Olmec-style frieze (500 BC) of the god Shibalba, of the underworld. Our chatty guide worked hard for his only pay, our tip, almost like a clever street guy from the Bay Area, gordito with a wispy

Shibalba, 500 BC, Loltun

Traps of mastadons, Loltun

Genghis Khan beard. He told us his theory that the Olmecs were Mongolians. His version of the Mayan story is that his ancestors were peacefully meditating in their caves till the Olmec introduced human sacrifice to please a whole pantheon of gods. According to his world view. the Mayan long count has been a long history of autodestruction. Now the new era provides the return to the peaceful roots. Do the Mayan villagers believe that? I asked. They live in fear of the Catholic church, but they feel it. We felt disoriented by his narrative and the spell of the beautiful cool caverns whose rocks told geologic and human time stretching back so many thousands of years. This was the realm that opened to the underworld in an older religion of light and dark, the living and the dead. Cenotes (sinkholes) opened up to the sky, but without water. Mastadons and sabre toothed tigers used to be trapped in

Handprints almost 10,000 years old

them. The Mayans covered the holes and stampeded them across. But now they are idyllic, dripping with green and sunlight from above.