A Uaymitun Story: Dzibilchaltun

Dzibilchaltún is the "place where there is writing on the stones," referring to the many memorial stones found at the site which is located about 15 Km north of Merida and about 40 Km southwest of Uaymitun.

Wonderful flowering trees at the entrance to Dzibilchaltun

Dzibilchalrun Zona Arqueologica

Entrance path to the site

English version of the multi-lingual signage

Once we had entered the site, we picked up an English speaking guide to show us around the site. On the way to the museum, there are a number of statues outside and many, many artifacts and illustrated tablets inside.

After a brief tour of a reconstructed Mayan village, which would have been what peasant life would have been like outside of the city, we entered the partly restored site.

The most famous structure is the Temple Of The Seven Dolls, so named because of seven small effigies found at the site when the temple was discovered under the ruins of a later temple pyramid by archaeologists in the 1950s. On the Spring equinox, the sun rises so that it shines directly through one window of the temple and out the other.

First glimpse of the Temple of the Seven Dolls

The pillar structure is aligned astronomically with the temple

The temple is connected to the rest of the site by a sacbe, or "white road," so-called because they were originally coated with white limestone, built over stone-and-rubble fill.

The sacbes also link the various cities over many, many kilometres

Interesting flora

The not over-imaginatively named "Yellow Tree"

No known name, so we named them "Purple Plant"

At the southern end of the site were a number of other structures including a large courtyard with incredible acoustics. A Spanish church was also built on top of and from the rubble of the Mayan buildings.

The view back up the sacbe

The other major feature of Dzibilchaltún is its cenote, Cenote Xlakah, located around the center of the city's ruins.

After the long walk along the sacbe in the 92F heat and sun, we were very glad to reach the cenote!