Visiting the UXMAL Mayan Ruins from Mérida, Mexico by BUS! (+ Choco-story)

The Yucatan Peninsula is the heart of the ancient Mayan civilization and Merida is close to many different Mayan ruins so before we leave we need to go see one for ourselves. The most famous Mayan ruin in the area is Chichen Itza which is one of the new seven wonders of the world however we've heard it's extremely busy and loaded with vendors so we decided to go to some other ruins instead Uxmal. Uxmal is located a little over an hour southeast of Merida and while you can hire a which is what we originally planned to do we've decided to be a little bit more adventurous and take a public bus instead. So there's not a ton of information on taking a bus to Uxmal but we did find a very helpful blog post that we'll link to below and in some other recent comments people said that there's a bus that leaves from here at 9 a.m so we got here at 8 a.m just to make sure we had plenty of time and we do not miss the bus. Our tickets have been acquired it cost 398 Mexican pesos which is about 21 USD that's for two round-trip tickets and it's cash only but the man was very nice he told us what bus it was what time it leaves what gate we go to so i think we're off to a good start. So the guy at the ticket counter told us the wrong bus bay number so things could have gotten really really bad but thankfully we figured it out it's a good thing that we did because the bus is oversold and there are people sitting on the steps in the front so had we not figured it out in time that could have been us but we're on the bus we're about to leave and one nice thing about the bus is that it has AC. We just went over this big bump we're in the very back so it's the worst and we caught some air my butts totally left the seat i'm glad there was a top on my coffee. The ride is already off to a very interesting start that was so funny. This bus ride so far is just super chill it's very quiet in here minus all the tunes that the bus drivers were asking and the scenery has been amazing we've gone through handful of small towns i just love getting to see the smaller towns here in mexico and we're now in this very windy hilly area with just tons of green as far as the eye can see all right we have made it to Uxmal it is 10 30 a.m so the bus ride was about an hour and a half which is how long i read that it would be so honestly everything has gone super smoothly normally we would have liked to have gotten here right when they open so that we can beat the heat and the crowds but unfortunately that's the downside of taking the bus versus driving ourself out here or taking a tour but so far it doesn't seem too busy but it is pretty hot so a few logistical things about visiting Uxmal it is 499 pesos per person if you are a tourist it is cheaper if you are a resident of mexico or a resident of the state of yucatan and that equals about 26 USD you are able to pay about 409 pesos of that on a credit card but the rest of it is in cash we do hear this is one of the more expensive ruins to visit in the area and the price is constantly going up so we cannot guarantee that will be the price when you visit also we did have to pay a 50 peso fee to be able to film in the park which is also cash only you can also hire a guide once you're inside the ruins for 900 mexican pesos or about 47 USD and that's for an english-speaking guide we went back and forth on whether we wanted to hire a guide or not and we ultimately decided to explore it on our own all right you ready to explore Uxmal let's do it we always try to cover our eyes so we can capture our true reaction on camera one two three oh cool Uxmal is said to be first settled in 500 BC although i have read some conflicting dates but it didn't really rise in power until the 9th and 12th centuries AD and quite possibly the most iconic structure here at Uxmal is the pyramid of the magician which instantly greets you as you walk in although the word Uxmal means thrice built the pyramid of the magician is actually made up of five temples built in different periods all on top of each other a couple interesting tidbits about this pyramid is that it has rounded corners which is pretty unique for mayan architecture and i also read that back when the mayans were here this pyramid was painted red and over time it's faded to the stone color you see today it would have been pretty crazy to see this huge pyramid completely covered in red something else really cool about this pyramid is we keep hearing people clapping and apparently if you stand here and you clap it makes this really crazy noise cool my hands now hurt from clapping them so hard Uxmal is said to be a strong example of the puuk architectural style and from our understanding this consists of a plain lower section with a highly decorative upper section and this is the nunnery quadrangle which is a complex of four buildings with 74 rooms with this giant open space between them and as you can see it really reflects that puuk style with the bottom part of the buildings being smooth and geometric while the top is very ornate with lots of different imagery one thing i find super fascinating about mayan architecture is just the amount of symbolism that's in all of the buildings for example i read that this northern building here has 13 doorways which is likely a representation of the 13 levels of the maya heavens whereas the south building which happens to be the lowest of them all has nine doorways possibly referencing the nine levels of the maya underworld while we don't know what all of the symbols mean on the buildings it just makes it so much more special to walk around here because although these buildings are just beautiful for us to look at it's cool to think about how for mayans every little detail of these buildings just holds some sort of meaning and significance to them there are so many iguanas running around all over this place you really gotta watch where you step around this place they could be anywhere they've startled us several times i've been trying to think about what to compare the iguanas to and we've determined they are the mayan squirrels we mentioned the game poke poke in our video when we explored and this is a mayan ball game where players can only use their knees elbows and hips and this is one of the courts they played on and you can see the hoop that they had to score in and it's pretty high i'm pretty impressed that they could do that do you think i made it home run the last major building we're checking out here is the governor's palace which is 328 feet long and is one of the largest maya palaces ever discovered and like we mentioned before it has a lot of important symbols including stone masks of the rain god chuk and speaking of rain rain was very important here at ushmal there are no natural bodies of water to use so they made a variety of water storage systems to collect rainwater like a chultun which you can see while walking around and as for the downfall of ushmal it is believed that between 20 000 and 25 000 mayans lived here until around 1200 a.d although i have also read conflicting dates on that one too and it's not a hundred percent known why they left but some of the theories are that it was due to drought a degrading environment or warfare the site was rediscovered in the 19th century and excavated starting in 1929 with so much more to be uncovered it's crazy to think about when people found this area like it was probably just completely covered in jungle and then also to think about how much more there is out there that is still covered that people don't even know about just you're just thinking about being in an airplane going over and it's just jungle but there could be like ruins underneath there that is like mind-blowing could be endless amounts of ruins we're just walking around this area and there's just stones here scattered it looks like they're numbered so they were taken apart maybe they'll put them back together somewhere but on the stones there's lots of little designs and then on the other side over there there's some areas that are roped off that they're like i mentioned like uncovering different places and restoring it to have other people come and enjoy it but what you can see here is truly incredible and we so enjoyed our time here a lot of people compare it to chichen itza and a lot of people say they enjoy it here more than chichen itza and while we can't speak to that as we have not been to both our guide moy the other day for our cenotes tour said that this is where the locals would send you so it gets the local stamp of approval and it gets our stamp of approval there are places to eat inside the ruins and outside but we thought ahead because we're really smart we brought some tacos and a torta it is 2 45 p.m and there are two different buses that head back to merida one at 3 p.m and one at 5 p.m and we'd say for the average visitor especially if you're not trying to film the entire experience coming on the 9 a.m bus and leaving on the 3 p.m bus is plenty of time to enjoy ushmal but we spent quite a bit more time than the average person and we still have one more spot we want to check out just right across the street from ushmal is a place called choco story which is a chocolate museum that talks about the history of chocolate its connection to mayans and has chocolate tasting so we obviously have to go the museum is split up into a bunch of different huts which are connected by a gorgeous outdoor pathway we visited the first two huts so far and they explain a bit about the different types of cocoa where it originates and how important it was to the mayans so cocoa beans are one of three different currencies that the mayans had along with volcanic rock and copper and it costs three cocoa beans to get three peppers you also get to see some of the tools and methods to process cocoa into chocolate it takes 20 of these cocoa pods to make one kilogram of 70 percent bitter chocolate in addition to the exhibits they also have a mayan ceremony that happens every 20 minutes so we're gonna go check that out next they also have some animals that have been rescued and are unfit to be released back into the wild including monkeys and a jaguar to be honest we are big caged animal fans but i'm not gonna lie these monkeys are pretty cool he's grabbing something with his tail i do not want to walk directly under them because i don't want to get pooped on they're right above the walkway that's why i didn't want to walk under it because he just peed for a good 15 seconds when we first saw the jaguar we noticed that he's limping really really badly which made us so sad we read the sign and it turns out he was shot in the leg and he was completely disabled and could not walk but through rehab he is now able to walk again he just looks slightly drunk while he walks now never in my life did i think i would be within a foot of a jaguar especially one that size that one is huge much bigger than the other one and for our final stop in the museum we're going to attend a chocolate demonstration and tasting but we've been informed that we are attending the spanish version so not 100 share how much we will actually understand we're about to try some chocolate and you get to put some extras in it so i put sugar chili and all spice in mine that's chocolatey that's very chocolatey i think i put the perfect amount of chili where i don't really taste it very much in mine i put sugar cinnamon and then oftentimes my food is the one that gets filmed so i was putting in some habanero chili pepper and the camera wasn't in focus so i had to do it twice so let's see how this goes oh do you see fire coming out it's not that bad but it is really rich and chocolatey that is so good this would be like perfect on a cool morning oh yeah which is not today today's a very hot day it's the exact opposite of today's a hot afternoon this museum was a fun and delicious stop but it's now about 4 30 so we're gonna head out to the bus stop just in case the bus arrives early although we hear that it usually runs pretty late the bus finally made it at 5 36 which is about what i expected i hear it normally runs about 30 minutes late and this ac feels so good honestly today went super smoothly minus the delay we had at the end of the day which we were expecting it couldn't have gone much better and we would definitely recommend taking the bus out to uxmal and if you're looking for more information on visiting uxmal make sure to check out our website which we'll link to below by the time you see this video we will have a guide about visiting uxmal including a good tour option that we almost went with plus tips for if you want to take the bus like we did and just more tips in general unfortunately our time here in medida is quickly coming to an end but as we promised when we got here in our next video we're going to be showing you the beautiful home we've been staying in while we're here plus the neighborhood and some local spots we've loved slimy everything is slimy and sticky like i can barely even hold the camera so hot and so hot and hurt it's getting hot in here so make sure you wear sunscreen i am getting so hot i'm gonna up my spf darling i would like more chocolate please you can get up and get it yourself oh harold you are so bad to me gwyneth i take the best care of you i bring you chocolate every day that's the end of my story