The Puuc route is a run of about forty kilometres beginning at Uxmal and ending at Labná, with Kabah, Sayil and Xlapak in between. Five sites in forty kilometres: the greatest concentration of first-rate Maya architecture in the state, and it can all be done in a day.
01 What Puuc actually means
Puuc means “hills” in Maya, and names the only area with relief in an otherwise flat state. But the term is used above all for an architectural style, and that style is why this route is worth the day.
The signature is a wall in two parts: the lower half plain, almost bare, and the upper half entirely covered by a mosaic of limestone pieces carved one by one and then mounted on the wall. Frets, latticework, small columns and rows of hook-nosed masks repeated until the whole facade is covered. It is a work of cutting and assembly, not of carving directly into blocks already in place.
02 The five stops, in order
Uxmal is the first and the largest, and the only one with real facilities. Here stand the Pyramid of the Magician, oval in plan with a sloping profile unusual in the Maya world, and the so-called Nunnery Quadrangle, four buildings around a courtyard with mosaic-covered facades. It is inscribed as world heritage together with its associated Puuc sites.
Kabah comes next, with a celebrated facade covered in masks repeated in rows. Sayil has a palace of three stepped levels and ninety-odd rooms, its ranks of small columns visible from a distance. Xlapak is the smallest and the one almost everybody skips. And Labná closes with a free-standing arch, one of the most photographed elements of Maya architecture, and yet usually seen with nobody in front of it.
03 How it works in practice
By car, from Mérida. The logical base is the capital, a little over an hour from Uxmal, and the day works with an early start: Uxmal at opening, before any coach has arrived, and the rest of the route through mid-morning and early afternoon.
Public transport does not cover the route. There are organised excursions from Mérida that do it in a day, a reasonable alternative for anyone not driving, with the usual limitation: fixed timings and little scope to linger where you want to.
04 What you have to accept
Three things. First, the sun: these are open sites in pale stone with barely any shade, and here the mean maximum does not drop below thirty degrees in any month. Water, a hat and an early start are not generic advice, they are the condition for the day to work.
Second, the information. Outside Uxmal, signage is sparse and there are no guides waiting at the gate. Without prior reading or a hired guide you see five handsome sites and understand little of why they matter.
And third, the expectation. Anyone looking for the monumental scale and the staging of Chichén Itzá will not find it. What is here is something else: better-preserved facades, far more carved detail, and the possibility — rare at any famous archaeological site anywhere — of standing alone in front of a thousand-year-old building.
Misa.stefanovic.07 Marrakesh-Safi, for the traveller who cannot take the heat and goes to the coast.
Yasu Hokkaido, for the traveller who drives because the train no longer gets there.
Jason Parrish