Friday, March 23: Kabah and Uxmal

This was our day for the Puuc style, as represented in the nearby sites of Kabah and Uxmal, only about a half hour (each) from Ticul.

We arrived at Kabah early, before other tourists, and while there was still a soft coolness in the air. We started immediately in the second quadrangle with an assignment on residential architecture of the Puuc, by comparing quadrangles at Kabah and Uxmal. The students had clearly become more confident in looking at the remains and finding out the answers for themselves.

After some time in the second quadrangle I took the students over to the Codz Poop, the dominant structure of its own quadrangle, and then across the road to the archway that culminates the Kabah-Uxmal sacbe. We looked briefly at two more groups and then headed to Uxmal.

I planned 4 ½ hours at Uxmal, broken into four segments. In the first, took students through the Quadrangle of the Birds where the dominant structure was turned into the Pyramid of the Magician, and then into the Monjas quadrangle, ending with the eastern annex of the Monjas with what may be the largest room spaces in Uxmal.

The second segment was lunch for an hour, after which I resumed the tour with the Governors’ Palace, House of the Turtles, and Great Pyramid. At the Governors’ Palace, I quizzed the students on the façade imagery. Several seated figures on the façade sit on inverted, open-mouthed serpent heads as if rising out of them. I asked the students to turn around, bend over, and look through their knees so they could see the image right-side-up, and then tell me what it was. Ellen was the first to identify it as a serpent head. Then I asked them to identify the sign under the eye on the masks, but no-one figured out it was Venus. This gave me an opportunity, however, to discuss the probable Venus alignment of the building.

The final segment at Uxmal was 1 ½ hours of free time to work on their assignments and explore on their own. While Bill and I went to see the Pyramid called La Vieja, others went to the Monjas quadrangle to work on their comparisons with Kabah. When they finished this, they did many different things. I saw Marella reading the Castellanos book for Spanish class. Rivkah had found the Cemetery Group and drew the skull, crossbone, and eyes design of the platform in its plaza.

The evening involved a celebration of Bill, who had to return the next day to Vancouver for teaching.