We were all on the bus at 8:00.
On Friday, December 23, Bridget and I drank a cappuccino and an espresso at the “Mexican Café” then met our entire party in the lobby at 8:00. We found our tour guide, Pepé Lopez, and our driver, José, and climbed into a van for the two and a half hour drive to Chichén Itzá.
We passed through a small town on our way to the archaeological site.
The most interesting part of the drive was to follow the route of the
“Tren Maya”, a billion-dollar initiative connected with the name of the Mexican President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (or “AMLO,” as he is commonly known). It is a 948-mile intercity railway that will traverse the Yucatán Peninsula. Construction began in 2020 and we saw miles of completed track, resting on concrete railway ties. Other parts were merely rough patches carved out of the jungle. There were enormous earthmovers shoveling boulders and gravel into place. The rail line will be built over many archaeological sites but, as David said, “In this part of the world, everything is built over something.”
The first stop on our tour of Chichén Itzá was the
Pyramid of Kukulkán.
