Smee_elaine's travel blogs:
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Melting at Uxmal
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By the time we reached Uxmal (pronounced ush-mal) it was 41 degrees. Unfortunately we then had a tour in the midday sun given by the world's slowest speaking guide! He was very knowledgeable but we were all just looking for some shade (of which there was very little) or getting excited by lizards; the poor man looked rather upset when no-one asked any questions! The Temple of the Magician was really impressive as it was so huge. There were also lots of mosaics and stone animals on the buildings making them quite pretty. One of my favourite things was the statue of Chaoc, the rain god, who was very important in Mayan culture. We had lunch by the coach and were pressing ourselves up against the fence as there was a sprinkler in the field next door which occasionally came round and sprayed us!!
We headed on to a Mayan village where we saw a woman making a hammock and a man making thread from a cactus leaf, but sadly it was still too hot to pay much attention. We continued on to Merida and were very excited to discover that our hotel had a swimming pool..
The next day was spent exploring Merida. I went on a walking tour which took us round various buildings. One of the government buildings had a beautiful mural showing the compass points with a man coming out of corn (Mayan story of the creation of man) along with a jaguar, an animal representing the underworld and very much revered by the Mayans. I wandered around the market but soon got put off by the vendors who would harass you and if you ignored that grab you to look at their goods! Later Kelly & I went to the Museum of Anthropology which had quite a lot of artefacts from Chichen Itza, including lots of jade pieces. There were also a couple of Mayan skulls showing the deformed, almost cone like, shape. In the evening a few of us decided to try to find some live beetle jewelry, which Merida is famous for. It didn't take us long to find a shop selling beetles with jewels stuck to them - very strange in my opinion!
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