A little rest does wonders - that, and a beer, and the sun going
down. Suddenly it seemed imperative that we slide down to the Uxmal site
as the light slid away from the day.
It's impressive all right. In this photo you can vaguely see where
a chain goes down the left side of the stairs. When we were 1st here about
15 years ago they let you climb up to the top of this thing. We wondered
what the chain was about until it came tim eto go back down. It was steep
enough to make you want to fall. Those guys didn't want to work too hard
to throw people down those stairs. You needed to use the chain to get down.
While we were going down, this guy "froze" there and it took a bunch of us
to talk him down. I think you can probably see the high temple at the Kabah
site from here.
Also - the tarps on the lower left side are there to both keep the rain off
and protect the crew working on it from the sun. They thing is slumping out
at the base and they're worrying about the whole thing collapsing. They're
removing the rocks and numbering them. Interesting thing here is that I think
in one of the Catherwood etchings you can see that the base of this thing
was slumped way back when, likely due to treasure hunter burrowing into the
base of it - and was reconstructed for the tourist trade.
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