The next day (Sunday) we went from Campeche to Uxmal which is a quite famous archeological site. Or just stones again (depends on your point of view).We took a guided tour there which is always quite helpful. There are hardly any signs to tell the tourists about the history and buildings.
What I learned there is that Mayan language has some similarities with German. Very strange... Uxmal (pronounced oosh mul) means 3 times (ux=3; mal=times which is the same in German). The Mayas gave this name to the town because it was constructed 3 times. Or lets better say they but 2 times a new layer of stones over the old one;-)
The town was constructed at that place because of some big cenotes (like holes in the stone) where the rain water collected. It was quite interesting to learn that the ancient Mayas already did the same as we are doing now at Volkswagen. Collecting and treating rain water for further use (this is part of my project here).
But the Mayas didn't use all the cenotes for collecting drinking water. They also believed that in some of them lived the rain god. To get to know about the weather of the following year, they threw somebody into one of the cenotes (after 3 days of fasting). If the person survived for more than one day, they were retracted and asked about the weather. They believed that the rain god revealed his plans to those who survived. Well, it's a kind of weather forecast but I prefer the modern ones;-)
Later that day we continued our trip and went to Mérida. Again we followed the "Lonely Planet" (I still had it then) and went to a youth hostel. There we met quite a lot of people that had also been in Campeche. As Martin expressed it: Buying the "Lonely Planet" means buying in to a certain community.
And there was evening, and there was morning - the second day. And we saw that it was good!
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