Yucatan Peninsula – vegetarian in a leather jacket

Yucatán Road Trip: Balamkú

Traversing the distance between the city of Campeche and the hotels surrounding Calakmul takes about four hours, with little in the way of either gas stations or open archaeological sites in between. Over three hours and 150 miles after leaving our hotel we reached our first stop: the partially excavated site of Balamkú. Situated about 30 miles north of Calakmul in the southernmost part of the Maya lowlands, Balamkú was (re)discovered in 1990 and excavations began in 1994. Today, only the central and southern groups have been exposed. A stroll around the grounds reveals a series of attractive but relatively simple ruins picturesquely overgrown with slim, hardy trees and neatly kept by the groundskeeper.

To find Balamkú’s most impressive feature, however, visitors must search a little deeper. We wandered cluelessly for a while before the groundskeeper came up and indicated we should follow him. He led us up a narrow metal staircase alongside one of the site’s larger buildings (Structure 1 of the Central Group), unlocked the door, and ushered us inside. We found ourselves within a long, narrow chamber lit purely by the natural light filtering through a series of small, square holes in the ceiling. To out left stood one of the longest and oldest known painted stucco friezes of the Mayan world.

Stretching 55 ft across, the frieze once included four columns topped by rulers, separated by jaguars or jaguar-like creatures. According to the signage (or at least my questionable translation of the signage), the kingly uppermost figures—of which only one and a half of the original four remain—do not possess any uniquely identifying features and thus likely represented the concept of rulership rather than specific individuals. Each emerges from the jaws of an amphibian—again, according to the INAH sign—representing the fertile aspect of the world. The king’s birth from a creature that can move between water and earth suggests his ability to likewise move between worlds. Each “amphibian” sits upon a mask of the Earth Monster similarly representing the richness of the world while also evoking the four directions.

Jaguars—symbols of sacrifice, war, and death, as well as the risen and subterranean sun—and Jaguar hybrids fill the panels between the masks and provided the inspiration for the site’s current name (balam=jaguar, kú=temple, Balamkú=Temple of the the Jaguar). Taken as a whole, the frieze celebrates and glorifies Balamkú’s rulers and their intimate connection with a healthy and bountiful world.

The INAH website offers a slightly different iconographic summary, suggesting that composition equates the dynastic cycle with the solar cycle. In this view, the image of the ruler emerging from the jaws of the Earth Monster symbolizes his ascension to the throne just as the sun comes out of the earth at dawn, and the ruler’s death is shown at sunset, when he falls back into the Earth’s mouth.

All photos by Renée DeVoe Mertz, May 27, 2015.

Yucatán Road Trip: Museo Arqueológico de Campeche, Fuerte de San Miguel

The Archaeological Museum of Campeche (Museo Arqueológico de Campeche) is located in Fuerte de San Miguel, a short drive south of the city center. Begun in 1771, the colonial, sea-facing fortress is a major landmark in its own right, included in UNESCO’s designated World Heritage Site of the Historic Fortified Town of Campeche. Its barrel-shaped chambers and brightly painted courtyard create a dramatic frame for the museum’s excellent collection of Maya artifacts, including Jaina figurines, stelae and jade from Calakmul, as well as skulls exhibiting artificial cranial deformation. The presence of a friendly cat wandering the grounds also didn’t hurt our impression of the site.

Taken as a whole, the Museo Arqueológico was not only the largest museum we visited in Campeche, but also our favorite, rivaling even the monumental and more modern Gran Museo del Mundo Maya in Mérida for the most enjoyable museum of our trip.

Highly subjective personal rating: 8/10
[If you go to only one museum in Campeche, go here.]

All photos by Renée DeVoe Mertz, 26 May 2015.

Yucatán Road Trip: Baluarte de Santiago and Baluarte de la Soledad, Campeche

Campeche’s city center is circumscribed by the remains of a hexagonal wall built by the Spanish between 1686-1704 to defend the colonial seaport from pirate attack (UNESCO). Remarkably, much of the early fortification, including its eight bastions (baluartes), still exists. These bulwarks are now historical attractions in their own right, protected as part of the city’s UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a few have been turned into small museums to showcase other highlights of the region. Baluarte de Santiago, for instance, is now home to the Xmuch’haltun botanical garden of subtropical plants, while Baluarte de la Soledad houses the Museum of Maya Architecture with a small but impactful collection of Maya ceramics and useful information on nearby sites, including Calakmul, Hochob, and Hormiguero.

Highly subjective personal rating: 7/10

Baluarte de Santiago

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Baluarte de la Soledad

All photos by Renée DeVoe Mertz, May 26, 2015.

Yucatán Road Trip: Hochob

Hochob’s Structure 1. A metate (grinding stone) is visible on the right side of the image, near the base of the building.

From Edzná we began our trek to Hochob, the first Chenes-style site of our trip.

In contrast to the well-trod, well-maintained routes that had led us to every archaeological area up to this point, the way to Hochob was largely unmarked and required the use of narrow, rough, and unnamed roads. It would have been nearly impossible to find without a GPS, and was challenging even with one. So challenging, in fact, that we ended up using two different apps simultaneously (one on each phone), comparing and contrasting the maps they showed us as we inched our way towards our destination.

pano_20150525_115653 — Ceremonial center of Hochob. According to the INAH website, the site was inhabited from 300 CE “until long after the Spanish conquest,” reaching its peak around 850-1000 CE. However, the extant buildings mostly precede the city’s height and date to 600-900 CE.

As should be expected given its small size, remote location, and frequent absence from guidebooks, Hochob is not the bustling tourist beacon of places like Chichén Iztá or even Dzibilchaltún. The handful of other visitors we encountered during our stay consisted entirely of a Mennonite family and a father with his young son, all of whom explored the site with the casualness of locals on family outings. They were pleasant co-adventurers, and their presence amongst the ruins, vultures, and stark, twisting vegetation lent an almost cozy feel to the otherwise spooky beauty of the site itself.

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Unlike Edzná, whose residents had to create a massive platform to lift their ceremonial center above the surrounding valley, Hochob was built at the peak of a natural hill. Its population then expanded downward, creating terraced housing along the hillside (INAH). To reach the site now, visitors ascend a modern stairway composed of large, rounded steps that snake up the steep slope like a vertical conveyor belt.

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As we neared the top, we were greeted by an enormous, gaping face rising out of the cleared space of the courtyard. Although not the only building in the ceremonial center, this structure, known as the Palace, is by far the best preserved and most dramatic of the entire site.

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According to the plaque for the Palace (also referred to, less grandly, as Structure 1), the elaborate façade of the three-roomed building is a depiction of Itzamná, the Maya creator deity. Itzamná appears crouching and open-mouthed, with hook-like stones around the entrance forming the teeth of the god’s upper jaw and back molars. Narrow slabs protruding from the platform beneath the entrance represent the front teeth of its lower jaw.

Remnants of both the stucco and red and black paint that once covered all of the center’s buildings still cling to the Palace’s exterior. Patches of red paint are especially visible in the crevices of Itzamná’s spiral eyes.

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Use of an open-mouthed visage surrounding a central doorway and bordered by stacked, long-nosed masks is typical of Chenes architecture, a style that flourished from 600-800 CE in the region around Campeche and reached as far north as Uxmal, where another, similar face forms the focal point of the Pyramid of the Magician. At least two of the major buildings around Hochob’s small courtyard once possessed these masked façades, although the top half of the second structure is now missing.

Version 2 — Structure 1 (left) and a second, less preserved masked building (right, background).

After exploring the Palace and surrounding buildings, we followed a path extending from the side of the courtyard opposite the stairs. This trail was dotted with the chultuns that once stored water for Hochob’s inhabitants and made their life on the hill possible.

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The simple, almost perfectly round holes had their own kind of stark (if slightly precarious) elegance, and we appreciated the opportunity to see them up close even as we tried to avoid accidentally stumbling into them.

It was not yet mid-afternoon by the time we completed our nature walk/chultun stroll and made our way back down the generous staircase to the parking lot. Given the early hour, we briefly considered trying to add Santa Rosa Xtampak, the former capital of the Chenes region, to the day’s itinerary. Unfortunately, although less than 60 miles separate the two sites, there is no route between them that would take less than two hours. Going would have put us in high risk of trying to find our way back to Campeche in the dark, a prospect neither Josh nor I considered with relish. And so, happy with what we had seen but now also disappointed with what we were not able to do, we began the long, slow return journey to our hotel and a relaxed evening back in Campeche.

Highly subjective personal rating: 8/10 [worth the trek]

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Yucatán Road Trip: Campeche

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When we told Valerie, the proprietress of the Pickled Onion, that we planned to spend three nights in Campeche after leaving her hotel, she looked at us with the horror and surprise of someone discovering a hidden, profound stupidity in people she had previously assumed to be normal. Even after explaining that we would use the city as a base to explore its surrounding area, we were unable to convince her that there could be any logic in giving the port town more than a day of our precious time.

Although we remained confident in our plans, Valerie’s reaction did succeed in lowering our expectations. We were therefore pleasantly surprised that evening when we arrived in the region’s colorful, well-preserved capital, a city that would soon become our favorite on the peninsula.

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For travelers, Campeche offers a pleasant balance of outsider-friendly amenities—including good, reasonably priced hotels; a plethora of restaurants; excellent museums; generously distributed drug stores; and an electronics shop—without the crowds, hectic roads, or unavoidable tourist traps found in the larger centers of Mérida or Cancún. The historic center is also modest enough to be covered on foot, with narrow streets lined by sidewalks and brightly painted buildings, many of which conceal courtyards behind their opaque exteriors. The main square, too, offers a quiet, scenic place to rest and people-watch or feed the pigeons after a day of sightseeing.

While three full days out of a two week vacation would have been a lot to spend in the city itself, Campeche’s many good museums and location near several important but otherwise out-of-the way sites—including monumental Edzná, Chenes-style Hochob, and the island necropolis of Jaina—meant that we left feeling our time there had been too short.

Highly subjective personal rating: 8/10

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Yucatán Road Trip: Loltún

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Loltún (aka, Lol-tun or Grutas de Loltún) is an expansive network of caverns located in the northern Puuc region of the Yucatán Peninsula about 20 km (at least 30 minutes by car) northeast of Labná. The inhabitants of the Yucatán have used the caves here for thousands of years for both practical and sacred purposes: as a source of water, clay, and shelter; as a burial place; as a pilgrimage destination; and, more recently, as a defense during the Caste War (1847-1901).

Despite my initial enthusiasm for what promised to be a naturally and culturally fascinating site, as the day of our visit approached I found myself torn about embarking on another cave tour after our experience at Balankanché. On the one hand, I had been looking forward to seeing Loltún’s rock paintings and in-situ artifacts for months. On the other, I really did not enjoy the sensation of having my lungs squeezed or the subsequent panic attack that came with it. Therefore, the night before we were scheduled to head to Loltún, I decided to read some of the more recent descriptions on TripAdvisor to get a better sense of what we were in for.

That decision turned out to be a mixed blessing. While I didn’t find any signs we would experience the same level of discomfort we had at Balankanché, I did come across a few reviews by angry visitors stating that after paying the entrance fee and going on the tour, their guide had insisted upon tips of 500 pesos (between $25-$30) per person. Not only was this much higher than the going rate for guides at any other place we had encountered, but when taking the day’s expenses of hotel and gas into account, it was more cash than we had. In addition, ATMs—like gas stations—are fairly rare commodities in this area; the only one we knew of for certain was at Uxmal, but there was no way of getting to it without spending precious time and gas driving out of our way and then paying for parking again.

After some debate, we decided to take our chances and stick to our original plan of going to Loltún, put aside as much cash as we could, and just look for ATMs along the way. (We didn’t find any.) After all, we reasoned, if guides wanted to require high, unstated costs that most visitors couldn’t reasonably be expected to be prepared for, surely there must at least be an ATM at the site. (There wasn’t.)

By the time we finally reached Loltún, we were low on both cash and gas, leaving me high on anxiety. At the welcome center, we looked in vain for any indication of what the cost of the guide should be, but saw only the (also rather high) entrance fee. We swallowed hard and paid for our tickets, then waited.

The crowd grew considerably over the next 20 minutes, until eventually the guides approached and shuffled us into two, large groups of around 12 people each. Although tours were supposed to be available in English or Spanish, and although there were still several guides who did not accompany either group, both tours were in Spanish. I was disappointed until I realized that being handled like extra luggage rather than actual members of a tour relinquished us from the pressure of giving a particularly high tip. I was finally able to relax. A little.

Without the insight of a guide, we relied on the dual-language signs posted at some of the important stopping points along the path, as well as Andrew Coe’s guidebook, for information on the history of the cave. Mostly, though, we just focused on what we saw and tried not to fall as we slipped over slick, sometimes steep, and often dark paths that connected the caverns’ dramatically lit highlights, including the roughly carved “Head of Loltun;” hand paintings; and the giant “Room of Inscriptions,” which is naturally illuminated by two, large holes in its ceiling. Crucially, these openings let in air as well as light, and are thus partially responsible for the cave’s relatively cool—and breathable—climate. Even with the more pleasant temperatures, however, the caverns were still quite humid and some of the smaller spaces became less-than-comfortable when filled with people. The precariousness of the paths, too, make Loltún a destination that requires at least a moderate level of fitness and lack of fragility, not to mention a pair of good, grippy shoes.

Even though we couldn’t follow most of what was being said, the guide still enabled us to navigate the sometimes precarious terrain, in one spot acting as a physical anchor and pulling us up a particularly difficult incline. At the end of the tour, we handed him all the money we had set aside (minus a small amount held back for buying the gas we would need to get to Campeche that evening) and he accepted it with a thank you and without a second glance.

Would we go back? Probably not. Even a year later, a smog of stress still hangs over my memories of our visit. But much of what we saw was spectacular and unlike anything we encountered elsewhere. All-in-all, I’m glad we went and mostly wish I hadn’t worried so much along the way.

Highly subjective personal rating: 6.5/10 [Actual content of the caves: 8/10; experience leading up to and during the tour: 5/10]

loltun_entrance_relief_by_rm — Low relief carving of the seated “Loltun Warrior” and column of glyphs at the entrance to the caves. According to Coe, the oversized figure is probably a portrait of a ruler from Izapa, a pre-Classic city in southern Chiapas, and may be evidence of Loltún’s role as a pilgrimage site.

loltun_head_by_rm — “Head of Loltun” positioned at the end of the spacious “Cathedral” chamber. The head was actually found elsewhere in 1960 and moved to its present, theatrical location.

loltun_handprints_by_rm — Positive and negative (silhouetted) paintings of hands on the walls of the “Child’s Room.” The chamber is named for the burial of a 10-year-old boy whose body is now in Mérida.

loltun_cave_large_room_by_rm — The “Room of Inscriptions,” with person for scale.

Yucatán Road Trip: Labná

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Driving another three km east from Xlapak took us to Labná, the last of the ancient cities along the Ruta Puuc included within Uxmal’s World Heritage site. Labná is a bit smaller than Kabah and Sayil, and is one of the oldest cities of the region. The primary buildings, including the palace, gateway, and mirador (observatory), are notable not only for their unusually well-preserved state, but for being particularly emblematic of the Puuc style in both architecture and decoration, with myriad long-snouted masks, attached columns, step-and-fret designs, and even figural reliefs gracing their exteriors.

According to the entranceway plaque, Labná’s origins likely date “from around the beginning of our era,” although the remaining structures are the result of multiple building phases from 750 to 1000 CE. Like the other cities in this arid area, Labná depended on its ability to catch and store rainwater, which it did using nearly 70 chultuns (narrow, domestic cisterns) and a natural aguada (sealed depression in the land, similar to a cenote).

labna_palace_and_sacbe_by RM — View of Labná’s palace from the southeast, with the connecting sacbe visible on the left.

The palace is the first major building visitors encounter within the archaeological area. Set on a platform and facing the sacbe that still connects it to the residential and mirador groups located directly to the south, this structure is the largest of several buildings that make up the “palace group.” Although shorter and less imposing than Sayil’s three-story version, Labná’s palace has the relative advantage of being more accessible and better preserved. And its many nooks and crannies do benefit by close inspection.

Labna palace detail with warrior and Chaac by RM — Long-snouted mask (center) and partial warrior statue (left) on Labná’s palace.

Labna palace passage by RM — Vaulted passageway joining two of the palace’s buildings.

Labna palace detail by JA — Long-snouted mask with remnants of red paint.

room interior of Labna's palace by RM — Swallow living in a room of Labná’s palace.

Labna palace detail by RM — Detail of Labná’s palace showing head emerging from one of the most elaborate long-snouted masks of the region.

Labna palace detail, alt view by RM — Alternative view of the heavily decorated corner of Labná’s palace. Note the second human face at the base of the building, beneath the attached columns.

From the palace, visitors can take a path east to the “Edificio de las Columnas,” an L-shaped residential structure built in the Puuc Junquillo style, or walk south to Labná’s most distinctive feature: its gate.

Labna's_gate_west_side_by_RM — West side of Labna’s gate decorated with mat designs and miniature huts.

Labna's_gate_east_side_by_RM — Step-and-fret motif on the east side of Labná’s gate.

As an imposing structure that simultaneously limited and permitted movement between two plazas, the gate would have both connected and demarcated the spaces of the residential group to the west of the sacbe and what was likely a ceremonial center to the east [ref. map]. Iconographically speaking, the western face is the more exciting façade, with its miniature huts flanking either side of the archway. Each hut’s niche once contained a brightly painted stucco sculpture of a seated warrior, remnants of which are still extant today. The blue-green headdress and red walls are especially visible in the niche to the right (south) of the central doorway.

Labna's_gate_west_side_detail_by_RM — Detail of the west side of Labna’s gate with El Mirador in the background. The niche within the miniature Maya hut contains red and blue-green paint where a stucco warrior used to be.

Labna's_gate_niche_detail_by_RM — A bluish, stucco headdress; red walls; and jutting support stone are all that’s left of the warrior who once sat within the right niche of Labná’s gate.

For us, the gate is also memorable as the place where, while trying to 123D Catch the exterior, Josh smacked his head, skinned his shin, and bruised his foot falling down a pile of rubble. The experience was a good reminder to stick to the better-worn paths or, at the very least, to avoid unsure footing while wearing sandals.

labna_gate_residential_group_and_el_miriador_by_RM — View from the “residential group” of the gate, el Mirador, and a particularly aggressive pile of rubble.

To the east of the gate stands el Mirador, a 20 meter, pyramidal heap of stones topped by a small temple with a giant roof comb.

Labna_el_mirador_by_RM — El Mirador, Labná.

The many support stones on the south side of the comb are evidence of elaborate stucco work that once covered the front of the building and, like the archway, was probably brightly painted. Although we know from early descriptions that most, if not all, of this decoration consisted of human figures, very little of the original ornamentation has survived [ref. image]. Fortunately, it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to understand that this area—which is still impressive in its denuded state—would have been spectacular in its original condition.

Labna_trees_by_RM — Western path through Labná. Part of the palace is visible on the lower right.

We eventually returned to the welcome center via a more shaded (and rather beautiful) path on the western side of the site before once again hopping into our car and heading to Loltun cave, our final archaeological stop in the region and of the day.

Highly subjective personal rating: 7.5/10

Yucatán Road Trip: Xlapak

Departing from Sayil, we continued east for 5.5km until we reached another gravel drive branching off to the south, this time leading to Xlapak.

Unlike the other stops along the Puuc Route, little Xlapak is not officially inscribed by UNESCO within the Uxmal World Heritage Site. This is probably because the visitable area includes only one well-preserved building (Structure 1, aka, the “palace”), while the rest of the former city still lies in near-complete ruin. And yet, the singularity of this building, which seems to stand alone within an encroaching jungle, lends it a jewel-like quality unmatched by the larger and more elaborate structures elsewhere.

From the parking area, we followed a stone-lined footpath under a canopy of slender but densely growing trees. After the open and expansive locations of Sayil, Kabah, and Uxmal, the trail through Xlapak felt unusually intimate—almost eerily so.

After about 200 meters, we arrived at the north façade of the palace. This is the best preserved part of the building, with its step-and-fret frieze bordered by three sets of long-nosed masks stacked in triplicate at the corners and above the central doorway.

The frieze wraps all the way around the building (or did at one time, when the exterior walls were still fully intact), and it’s probable that the east and west sides were once identical. Likewise, the design of the south wall is similar to that of the north, in that both originally possessed three doors and a frieze divided into two equal sections.

IMG_4616 (2) — Southeast corner of Structure 1 with a faux-column and stack of long-nosed (Chaac) masks.

However, the southern façade boasts two large masks above its central doorway, just to the right of the pile of rubble that was once the structure’s southwest corner, that are unlike anything else on the building. With their long, hooked noses and modular construction, these faces bear some resemblance to other Puuc depictions of Chaac or Witz. And yet they also display unusually wide mouths, the upper jaws of which are filled with regular, serrated teeth. The noses, too, are turned in the opposite direction of most Chaac masks, curving upwards rather than down. It is unclear whether these differences are iconographically significant or simply a matter of style, but it is possible, as Andrew Coe has suggested, that the faces represent Tlaloc, the goggle-eyed rain god of central Mexico, rather than the Maya counterpart of Chaac (370).

IMG_4618 (2) — Two unusual versions of the long-nosed masks sit above the central doorway on the south façade of Structure 1.

IMG_4628 (1) — View of Structure 1 from the north-west. The heavily damaged side of the building gives a clear view of the interior structure of the walls and “Mayan arch” ceilings.

Continuing down the path leads to Group 2, but there is little to see here for the casual visitor. So little, in fact, that we have no photographs from this part of the site and I can no longer remember what it looked like. In another context, that might have been disappointing. At the time, however, we still had two more sites to visit that day before we needed to drive to Campeche and leave the Puuc behind. As a result, we were actually grateful to find the rest of the site undemanding and kept our time there brief.

Highly subjective personal rating: 7.5/10 [Although there is less to see here than at the other stops along the Puuc Route, Xlapak’s compact but scenic grounds offer a pleasant break from its more overwhelming neighbors. Also, it’s free to visit.]

All photos by Renée DeVoe Mertz, May 24, 2o15.

Yucatán Road Trip: Gran Museo del Mundo Maya, Mérida

Between Dzibilchaltún and Mérida’s city center sits the strikingly contemporary building of the Gran Museo del Mundo Maya. Built in 2012 in the shape of an abstracted ceiba tree (which in Maya mythology unites the three levels of the world), the museum expertly combines a vast collection of artifacts with up-to-date technology and display techniques, including immersive, multi-channel animations.

The Gran Museo divides its gallery spaces into two physically separated sections. During our visit, the first held an exhibition that was both innovative and straight-up weird. We never did figure out exactly what the thesis of the show was supposed to be (something related to evolution or extinction or how different cultures interpret the natural world?), but it included information on meteors as well as living, imagined, and extinct animals using geological fragments, fossils, European Renaissance prints, replicas of Maya artifacts, and a life-size installation representing the extinction and evolution of dinosaurs. Despite the jumble of ideas apparent throughout this section, most of the actual objects were interesting, while the unusual juxtapositions between seemingly unrelated items kept us engaged as well as confused.

Even so, I will admit to being relieved when we entered the second section, dedicated to Maya history and the museum’s permanent collection of artifacts. These galleries alone are well worth a visit to the Gran Museo, as they include a plethora of fascinating objects, many of which diverge significantly from what you can find in textbooks or even specialist publications on Maya cultures. Also refreshing were the explanatory texts, many of which appear in Spanish, Mayan, and English and reflect a perspective that somehow feels both personal and scholarly.

Highly subjective personal rating: 8.5/10 [strongly recommended]

All photos by Renée DeVoe Mertz, May 21, 2015.

Yucatán Road Trip: Dzibilchaltún

On the morning of our first full day in Mérida, we hopped back in the car and headed north of the city to Dzibilchaltún.

Located on a hot, dry plain about 22 km south of the coast, Dzibilchaltún has the honor of possessing the least picturesque ruins of the 20-plus Maya sites we visited. However, what the destination lacks in architectural or decorative splendor it makes up for in historical importance and, thanks to its cenote, natural beauty. The on-site museum—which consists of both indoor and outdoor displays of artifacts, stelae, and anthropological installations—is also quite good and added significantly to our appreciation of the site.

First occupied around 800 BCE, Dzibilchaltún was one of the earliest major settlements on the peninsula. As a result, some of the oldest known ceramics of the region come from here. The local economy was based on salt trade, and the relative strangeness of the city’s location—which is both inhospitable and fairly far from the sea—can be understood as a compromise between finding land that was capable of supporting a minimal amount of agricultural cultivation while simultaneously as close to the salt-producing coastal lagoons as possible. Of course, the presence of a cenote, offering fresh water in an otherwise arid environment, would have been a key factor in the choice of locale as well.

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At one end of the traversable ruins stands the site’s most iconic building, the Temple of the Dolls. Named for the seven, rough, ceramic figures once buried in front of its altar and now on display in the museum, the temple sits in near isolation at one end of a large, open plaza. Doors located at the center of each of the sanctuary’s four walls heighten the effect of the square building’s rather unusual radial symmetry, while skeletal remnants of Chaac masks sit above these entrances and at the roofline’s four corners. Like many surfaces at the site, the masks (and numerous nearby stelae) were once covered in sculptural, painted stucco. Archaeologists have discovered graffiti inside the temple as well, some of which may date to 1200–1520 CE, when Maya pilgrims reopened and restored the sanctuary. Unfortunately, the building itself is no longer accessible and must be appreciated from a distance.

Running east-west, a long, straight sacbe connects the Temple of the Dolls to Dzibilchaltún’s central square. Visitors can either follow this road to the rest of the site or walk along a parallel (and more shaded) path part of the way. Those who take the sacbe will also pass another, circular trail that leads to very little.

The central plaza consists of a few, spread-out structures, including a small pyramid, an open Franciscan chapel, stone bleachers, and a gateway. On the other side of the gateway lies the Xlacah Cenote, perhaps the site’s greatest highlight.

Swimming is allowed, albeit “at your own risk,” but there is no changing room or shower on the grounds.

As an oasis in an otherwise parched landscape, the water here is teeming with life. During our visit, the pool seemed especially hospitable to lily pads and various fish, the latter of which struck us as a little too eager to swarm a bit of flesh and check it for possible food. We spent the majority of our time at Dzibilchaltún admiring the cenote and its surrounding flora and fauna, but left the swimming for another day.

Although I don’t imagine myself returning to Dzibilchaltún, the cenote and museum alone made it worth a visit. If you go, arrive early to beat the tourist groups bused in from Mérida. There is no escaping the sun, so having a hat, sunblock, and plenty of water is especially important here.

Highly subjective personal rating: 7/10
[ruins: 5/10; cenote: 8/10; museum: 8/10]

All photos by Renée DeVoe Mertz, May 21, 2015.