Despite what Lonely Planet’s book on Yucatán says about Uxmal’s Casa del Advino (Magician’s House) (“it gives a rather bad first impression of Uxmal to the visitor” [p. 173]), this is one of the most impressive sites I’ve seen in the Mayan world. The photo above was taken from the Palacio del Gobernador (Governor’s Palace), which is itself impressive with its largely intact Puuc facades.

Anyway, back to the Casa. It was quite typical in much of Meso-America to build structures on top of existing ones, especially the larger pyramids. There appears to be some debate on the whys and whens, but I have heard numerous times that many of the add-ons were put up based on the Mayan life cycle of 52 years. What you see in the photo above is the fifth of these structures. It has been and is being restored. I climbed it in 1990, but now it is closed. The backside is in the midst of reconstruction, and you can currently see inside some of the exposed layers.

There is more to see at Uxmal, and the Puuc region. Time permitting, I’ll post more. Oh yeah, regardless of my disagreement of the comment in the book above, it helped us get around to many places and filled in several gaps we would have otherwise missed.