Uxmal is one of the most well-preserved Mayan ruins in Latin America, but not as famous as Chichen Itza or Tikal in Guatemala.  The Pyramid of the Magician is the focal point of the ancient city.  Work began on it in the 6^th Century but it was abandoned after the Spanish Conquest of the Yucatan.  According to one legend, the pyramid was constructed by a powerful magician in a single night.  In another legend, a dwarf that was born from an egg stayed off execution by completing three miraculous tasks, one them being the completion of a building higher than any other in the city.  I had been to Uxmal once before, over twenty years earlier.

That morning it was hard to get out of bed.  The room was quiet and comfortable, the air a perfect temperature.  My body had been a mess of aches and pains lately, mostly from a mysterious strain of arthritis.  On this run it had started in my feet and then spread to my right elbow and wrist.  Now I laid there and tried to compose myself before another long day that would involve a ton of walking.  When I finally did get up, already fully dressed, I grabbed a rune to take with me.  This time it was Ansuz, or the rune of the divine.

I walked past the cathedral and then took side streets to get to the station.  There were a few other tourists on board the bus.  The company was Sur.  My seat was in a single, right up next to the driver.  It took a little over an hour to get to Uxmal.  The driver said that the return bus would be passing at 3:30, which was a lot of time to kill, roughly five hours.  I walked up the road to the entrance as slowly as possible, taking it all in.  It was 430 pesos to get in, as expensive as Chichen Itza.

My plan was to take a picture of the Ansuz rune in front of the Pyramid of the Magician.  It took some work to find a decent place to set the stone, but eventually I settled it on a book, Saints and Madmen, I was carrying to act as a temporary table.  The pyramid is rounded and sloping in a way that makes it unique. 

Like the other pyramids I’d visited on this trip, it was closed for climbing.  It was hard to know if this new regulation was temporary due to COVID, or now a permanent policy.  A lot of things that had happened during the pandemic had stayed that way, like raised prices all over the world and places that no longer accepted cash.  The virus was designed to change the way we live, and it had.

From the pyramid, I walked around the grounds of the Nunnery and then down through the ball court.  The stonework seemed to involve serpents and pixelated faces.  The weather was pleasant, with just enough clouds to prevent the sun from boring down with full intensity.  Past the ball court was the Great Pyramid, 80 meters wide and 30 meters high.  On one level there is a structure with carvings of macaws, so it is also known as the Temple of the Macaws.

Climbing up to the Governor’s Palace, I caught up with a tour group being led by a guide who was telling him about his experience at the Kali Temple in India.  It seemed he was using his position as a platform to promote his autobiography.  The faces of his audience could’ve been carved from the same stone that was used to build the palace.  I was glad that I was not being shepherded around from site to site. 

From a distance I could see the top of the Pyramid of the Magician poking through the trees.  I slowly trudged back towards it.  There were four more hours to kill.  It was a good thing I’d brought a book.