Chac and Awe

We are sitting atop an ancient Mayan structure looking down on the Nuns Quadrangle at Uxmal.  It is already a deep, dark night with the moon and Saturn midway above the horizon. Orion gleams over our heads and except for muted jungle sounds, everything is still. The park is empty of daytime tourists. Only a few of us have come early for the sound and light show later in the evening. Flashlights flicker as people find places to sit, but otherwise the buildings around us are washed only with moonlight. Behind the quadrangle looms the huge and forbidding Temple of the Sorcerer, said, in Maya legend, to have been the home of the Dwarf King who built the structure in a single day and night.

It takes very little imagination to place lighted torches at the entrances of the buildings and to watch a slow-moving procession of Mayan high priests and city officials dressed in rich textiles and tall, feathered crowns as they cross the square below to booming drums, bird-like flutes, wailing calls and prayers. For us, the show has already begun.

Two headed snake during light show

Later, lights and sound from the nightly show reverberate through the square, by that time there are many more people, but still a small crowd compared to other ruins we have visited so far on this trip. It is a lively group, not particularly quiet, especially with children about.  Nevertheless, the magic remains. At one point in the show, the crowd began to chant “Chac”, “Chac”, “CHAC” calling for the rain god to unleash the water and grant the Mayan people abundance once again. All through the evening, one has the feeling that ghosts were still here, watching us.

Uxmal, though much smaller than Chichen Itza, somehow seems to take up more space, possibly because all of the buildings seem to crowd in on one another. It feels like an abandoned megacity, complete with skyscrapers towering overhead. Like so many other Mayan ruins, though, this was not a city per se. It was a religious center. The buildings are adorned with dramatic, interwoven symbology, almost all of which is devoted to Chac, the rain god, and Kukulkan , the principle diety in the Mayan pantheon who is usually depicted as a serpent with a bird-like head.

Governor's Palace shows Puuc style architecture

Clearly, though, Chac, as bringer of the rain, was the main focus of this place. Rain was vital to the Mayans, so you see his masks adorning most of the buildings. The temples themselves are entirely different than those at Chichen. The corners are rounded and the largest structures are built like huge cakes on progressively smaller and smaller ovals up to a crowning “house” or temple. Uniquely, these buildings were plastered over and brilliantly painted. They must have literally gleamed in the jungle light.

Two-headed snake in daylight

On purpose, we saw the sound and light show before we visited Uxmal in the daytime. We felt this would give us a much deeper experience of the place. Also, we were ready for a mini-vacation from the heat of Merida, so we made the Uxmal trip an overnighter.

By sheer luck, we booked ourselves into a hotel – the Hacienda Uxmal and Plantation, which turned out to be stunning. It was a throwback to an earlier, more luxurious idea of what a “jungle hotel” could be. Long, tiled corridors, polished wood rocking chairs and sofas, iron-framed beds. Some years back, it had hosted the likes of Jackie O, Queen Elizabeth II, King Faisal, and the Shah of Iran. An elegant ambience permeated the place. You could easily imagine Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall strolling arm in arm around the grounds as men in white suits hunched over hand drawn maps planning expeditions. In fact, there had been a number of such Yucatan explorers who had stayed in the original hacienda, including Frederick Catherwood and his partner John Lloyd Stephens, who were the first to discover and accurately describe the Uxmal ruins in text and pictures.

Even better, there was a swimming pool! Right in the middle of all the luxury was a cold, clear plunge that instantly took away all the day’s heat. As we swam, we noticed iguana sentries posted on the hacienda roof. They looked down up us with an air of haughty tolerance as they chewed quietly on palm fronds. Even the weather was exceptional. There was a cool breeze blowing through the corridors most of the afternoon keeping the temperature perfect and the bugs nonexistent. In the morning we awoke to a bird concerto -layers upon layers of bird sounds: hummingbirds, some sort of warbler, possibly some Peruvian oropendola, little brown birds (LBBs) and big, noisy birds (BNBs) and on and on There were far too many to keep track of. We gave up and chose to just listen to the music. All together, a perfect respite from the busy hustle of Merida.

The hotel was not particularly crowded, but there was an interesting international mix of characters – a French couple, clattering their steamer trunk-sized suitcases over the tile floors and sniffing the air for complaints. A German fellow who could not leave his technology for a single second - now and then spinning around and around shouting something in German - as he showed the hotel grounds to yet another person he’d Skyped. A British couple, who we came to refer to (affectionately) as Lord Harumpf and Lady Overtan-Hyde, who apparently did and did not live in England, who were apparently well off, but not so well off that they could leave the management of affairs to someone else, and who seemed rather restless yet a trifle weary. Lord H, on our first encounter, did not deign to speak directly to us. Lady O, however, was quite cordial and gave us the broad strokes of their itinerary as she translated the sotto voce mutterings that erupted from his Lordship now and then. As is so often the case in the synchronous world of travel, we would meet up again down the road. One especially helpful guy was Luis Chen, an employee hotel who gave us loads of information about Uxmal, including all the sites worth visiting in the area. He spoke excellent English, Spanish, and (as far as we know) Mayan and gave us thoughtful reflections on the state of Mexico now and his hopes for the future.

After a good night’s rest in our huge room, we packed up to return to Merida. The cries of “Chac” from the night before must have propitiated the rain god. We were drenched in a downpour that followed us back to Merida.

Dona Ofelia (retired flamenco maestro) & Eric at Hotel Mucuy

The next morning, we packed for our next destination, Itzamal, and said goodbye to Ophelia and Lilly (who we discovered was actually named Lena) and the staff folks we had befriended at the Hotel Mucuy.

The younger Ofelia (current flamenco maestro) and her husband at the Hotel Mucuy