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Cruise! Day 3 Uxmal Tour

On Wednesday we woke up, grabbed a quick breakfast and got in line to disembark at Progresso, Mexico.  Progresso is a small port that only has two cruise ships dock per week.  There were lots of different shore excursions we could have choosen, but we choose to go to Uxmal.  It has a larger area than the more popular Chichen Itza and we had been told that there are less tourists there.    We had a bus ride that was about an hour and 45 minutes.  The tour guide spent about half the time talking, and the rest of the time we sat back and watched the scenery.

At Uxmal right outside the gates was a courtyard with the gift shop and a restaurant.  They had these neat topiaries in traditional Mayan shapes.

Uxmal- The dwarf pyramid is unique with it's rounded corners and it's stepped design.  Stories say that it was built overnight, but the construction of it leads to the belief that it was built in sections over time.

Here our tour guide is showing a map of the MesoAmerica area and all the different sites of Mayan Ruins that have been found and documented.  There are hundreds of them in the Yucatan area. 

The Governor's Palace is the longest facade in Pre-Columbian MesoAmerica.  The intricate carvings and detail of the facade is really quite interesting.

 


This was at a corner of the building... on the ground.  Some sort of irrigation?  Gutters??  (sorry... it's all turned sideways) Then there's the fertility statue, and the platform that virgin's would dance on.
A ball court... they would have teams and pass the ball around and the captains would stand at these rings on either side of the court and have to throw the ball through the ring.  The prize for the winning team was that the captain would be killed... now how's that for incentive?  After that is one side of  a quadrangle building.  A courtyard with four buildings on either side.  It is called the Nun's Quadrangle.


Our official tour ended at the Nun's Quadrangle and we were free to explore the grounds of Uxmal until it was time to go back to the bus.  Here's the Grand Pyramid.  We climbed all the way to the top!  It was an amazing view from up there.  At the top there it a little stone "throne".

We saw a trail leading off through some tree's and found the cemetary.  There wasn't anyone else there at all. 

On our way back to the bus we stopped at the Dwarf Pyramid again and got a picture of the other side of it.  It's is closed off and was the only structure we were not allowed to climb on.


After a great excursion we had a nice siesta on the bus ride back to the ship.  We grabbed a late lunch, rested up a bit, and then headed to dinner to catch up with our friends.

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