Xlapak-in'

I like these pictures because you can see kind of more about what the insides of the buildings look like. It was very hard to get a good picture inside one of the little a-frame rooms because they are so dark, but here you can see what it looks like since the roof is gone. Also, in the last one, I'm touching some plaster. The walls were plastered and smooth and painted, but I don't know what color. I would guess red. It is so unbelievable that the original plaster is still there in places. It is the original plaster. These sections have been mostly cleaned of debris, but not rebuilt or restored yet.

Xlapak unplugged

Unexcavated. Xlapak unexcavated. A lot of the site has not been fully excavated or restored. There is just too much archaeology and too little money to do it all, I guess. I mean, you can hardly take a step in the whole state without tripping over a piece of a ruin. Xlapak has some very pretty partially restored/ partially excavated areas. You can see the pile of rubble where I'm sitting. I don't know why I'm pointing, except I guess we thought it would be a cool action picture. We walked down another path and came to this section in a clearing and explored a little. Ginger took a self portrait while she waited for me to climb to the top of this building. It's higher than it looks and I'm not that comfortable with heights, so I feel it is a testament to my indomitable spirit that I made it to the top and close enough to the edge to get in a picture (plus I was still suffering the effects of the peanut butter/ Jugos California juice). The detail of the little columns was pretty.

Ginger's self-portraiture

While Ginger was taking candid self-portraits like this one, I was pondering life in one of these dark little rooms. I guess they HAD to have lamps or lanterns of some kind. And I figure they had hammocks to sleep in. But the vase paintings show palettes and benches and little platforms. It really is hard to stand in one of the dark little rooms and imagine how it must have been when people lived there. I wish I could go back in a time machine and just watch everybody. I wonder if I'd even be able to understand them at all, though? Let's face it, I don't really understand nas-car fans, HumVee owners, or beauty pageants, and those phenomenae are part of my natal culture.

Chultunes

The people who lived at Xlapak however many centuries ago (embarrasingly, I don't know) collected rainwater in human-made wells called chultunes. Since there are no rivers in Yucatán, the people had to rely on underground reservoirs of water. These natural holes in the ground with water in them are called cenotes, but apparently when they don't naturally occur in a convenient location, people make them. When that happens they're called chultunes. Here I am looking at a chultun at Xlapak. The idea is impressive, but they aren't visually stunning. Unlike the spectacular facades of this building in the first couple of pictures.

Archeology breakthrough at Xlapak

While Ginger was walking around taking brilliant pictures, I explored inside all of the rooms that I could. It was really dark in most of them. And a little creepy because it was so dark. But I found one that had a lot of light from the open doorway and I could see the walls. I discovered, amongst the guano, what just might be the only instances of stone carvings inside one of these Puuc Maya A-frame rooms. I don't know how good the photography is, but if you look carefully, you should be able to make out the wiggly carvings. There were two: one on either side of the part of the wall that didn't slope. They were symetrically opposite each other. I wondered if they were carved there, once they were in the wall, or if they were older carvings that got used when whoever made the house put up the wall. I wonder about these things. None of the rooms in these "apartment" buildings have windows. They all just have the one door and they are all about the same size. Maybe 8 feet deep and about 15 to 20 feet wide.

Xlapak

With a name like Xlapak, you know you're back in México! Xlapak, pronounced sort of like "Shlah-pahk," is the next archeology site along the Puuc Trail after Labná. The entrance is cool because it has a painting on the tree. I liked this place a lot because, not unlike some of the other ruins, you have to walk through the jungle to get to the buildings. Ok, so it's not savage jungle. It's a cleared out jungle so you can see through the trees and it has a pathway with little signs telling you which way is what. Again, though, there were very few other people around. I only remember seeing an Argentinian couple who took some of their obviously very valuable time to tell us how far the next set of buildings was. But walking through jungle, even tamed jungle, into the sunlight and finding yourself at a building like one of these is a very nice experience. This was another residence, probably an extended family of the Xlapak elite.

Salamanders...not Mexico

Those of you who know about my abhorrance of walking in the woods for no reason will intuit that the "Nature Walk" label is my attempt at sarcasm. But funny sarcasm. Not mean sarcasm. In case you don't know me well enough to have heard me rant about it in the past, I LIVE in the freaking woods. I spent a LOT of time in the freaking woods. And my idea of fun does NOT involve wandering around in the woods. I am not a nature goddess. Now, I do like nature. I like living in the woods. I like the idea of nature being out there and I can look at it from my porch, thank you very much. So when Ginger was in town last weekend, of course she wanted to dive into nature and go out looking for salamanders. I went with her. And, amazingly, we found salamanders. Or maybe newts. I don't know the difference and I haven't googled it. But here are the animals we found. We think they represent four different species. Enjoy.