Merida Day 19 - Dzibilchaltun

Much cooler today so leisurely morning, cheese omelette for breakfast and then set off. The guide books said that we could take a collectivo from San Juan Square. So after taking the bus to Centro and then walking to San Juan all the drivers there said no and that we had to go back 2 blocks. We realized they meant the bus station that serves Progreso. It turned out they have a bus that goes to Dzibilchaltun and a couple of small villages nearby. It cost us 10M$ each (a dollar!)
It was a bit of a rickety old bus and had a prominent Madonna attached to the front window with roses around. I suspect that the Madonna was being asked to hold the bus together.

Merida's bus drivers answer to a "drive through". He pulled up beside this vendor and
bought a bottle of juice from him.

We followed the same route as when we went to Progreso but then turned right and he dropped us off at the gates to the site and wrote down the times he would be returning for us.

I can't even begin to pronounce the name of this site.

It took as about 10 minutes to walk down the road to the parking lot and then down the pathway to the entrance. 118M$ (about $12) to get in and then we found out that the museum was closed for the day - we had forgotten that happens on Mondays. The site has had minimal restoration done to it and at least half of the people coming in were just there to swim at the cenote . So again, very few people.

Mum sketching at right, Dad sitting at left.

We wandered the ruins. There was enough restoration to get an idea of what a large city it was in its day, 20,000 people.

The main plaza

However there were also huge areas with just the base stones of buildings to be seen or just piles of rubble where it was possible to imagine how the site had appeared to those who found it covered with vegetation.

Rubble with undergrowth growing through it in the foreground, partially
restored in the background. Many of the stones were taken from the site to build
village homes and to pave the Progreso road, you can understand why as they don't look
like much, just in a random pile.

The main buildings had signage in Spanish, Mayan and English which was helpful as we had not hired the guide who was available at the entrance (250M$ for the short tour 350M$ for the longer one). Behind the main Plaza, on the way to the ball court is the Xlacah cenote. Most of the Mexicans, and some of the tourists, we saw on the site had bought in their towels and were in bathing suits but it was a little cool today for swimming, so we hadn't.

Cenote

The path to the Temple of the Seven Dolls (named for 7 small sculptures found inside) is a long road which would have been bordered by housing and there were also streets going off it. Now it is bordered by trees and the sound of birdsong.

It had rained very lightly, off and on, since we got to the site but got more serious while we were around this temple. At the equinox the sun rises and shines through the doorways of the temple. We understand that a large crowd gathers to see this, just like there are huge crowds at Chitchen Itza on the equinox to see the shadow of the snake on the pyramid.

Temple of the Seven Dolls

The temple is quite lovely, sitting by itself in this peaceful surrounding even though it doesn't have the presence of the pyramids at Uxmal and Chichen Itza.
The bus didn't return for a while so we had to hang around a bit but then walked back out to the road and caught it. From there it went into two small villages and back to Merida via an industrial section. It was very full, standing room only, by the time we got back into Merida and then caught our regular bus home out of Centro.
Exhausted, we were really ready for a drink and supper (in that order). Tomorrow Mum and Dad have a tour booked to Chichen Itza and George and I don't really know what we will be doing. We'll let you know.