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San Pedro, Guatemala, 4 April 2003

Tikal, Palenque, Merida, Uxmal and Loltun

Odv
2004-09-15 12:15:50

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on the night bus to Merida, but only after visiting a waterfall called Misol-Ha and a whole collection of smaller waterfalls with swimming areas called Agua Azul (which wasn't as idyllic as made out to be because of all of the tourists and shops next to the water). From Merida we visited Uxmal and the Loltun caves, using local transportation called colectivos, minivans that leave when filled with passengers, it was a lot cheaper than the organized tours at around 70 pesos (6,5 EUR) instead of 210 pesos (per person) the tours charge for transportation excluding entrance fees.

The Loltun caves were very nice and the guided tour was entertaining, but Uxmal was a little disappointing because the most important building "the pyramid of the sorcerer" was closed for renovation. However on the positive side, because it was Sunday, when most museums and sites are free in Mexico, we only had to pay 37 pesos instead of 87.

Merida is very pleasant town, with a nice atmosphere, on weekends streets in the center are cut off for traffic and outdoor events are organized. We were lucky to be there during a weekend. We also went on the free city tour organized by the helpful tourist agency. The guide told us that "people in Yucatan a very different from those in Mexico, people in Yucatan are friendly". He told us that the Mayas had predicted that their civilization would be destroyed by the monster with two heads and six feet bearing a cross. That monster turned out to be a Spaniard riding a horse.

Before the Spanish conquest, Merida was know as the place of the 5 pyramids. Nowadays there isn't a single Maya building left, since the Spaniards destroyed them all and used the stones to build churches and other colonial buildings.

On our last day in Merida we visited the museum of Anthropology. There we learnt that the Mayas used numbers in base 20 (we use base 10). So their numbers ran from 0 to 19 instead of from 0 to 9 like ours do. This matched up nicely with their calendar, consisting of 18 months of 20 days, and a short 19th month to make up for the missing days and include a leap day every 4 years. Their calendar system was pretty accurate to say the least.

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