Maya Train – आवारा मुसाफिर

A hidden paradise under threat

June 1, 2024222 Views

A fragile system of 10,000 subterranean caverns, rivers and lakes wind almost surreptitiously under Mexico’s southern Yucatan peninsula Now, construction of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s crown jewel project – the Maya Train – is destroying part of that cave network Rays of sunlight slice through pools of crystal water as clusters of fish cast shadows on the limestone below. Arching over the emerald basin are walls of stalactites dripping down the cavern ceiling, which opens to a dense jungle. These glowing sinkhole lakes – known as cenotes – are a part of one of Mexico’s natural wonders: A fragile system of an estimated 10,000 subterranean caverns, rivers and lakes that wind almost surreptitiously beneath Mexico’s southern Yucatan peninsula. Now, construction o...

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Worries abound that Mexico’s Maya Train will destroy jungle

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

February 5, 2023894 Views

Miguel Ángel Díaz walks slowly so his footfall on dry leaves doesn’t drive away what he’s trying to find in this dense forest of seeded breadnut and sapodilla trees. Coming to a small wetland, a sign warns: Beware of the crocodile. Díaz, a tourist guide, shines a laser pointer at a woodpecker and a toucan, and then moves it over to the blue tail of a Yucatecan jay. He learned years ago to decipher the sounds of the Calakmul jungle in Mexico’s southern Yucatan. Although it’s high season, this recent morning Díaz had a hard time finding tourists to guide. Last year, just over 50,000 visitors came to Calakmul, home to an ancient Mayan city that today is a UNESCO world heritage site. A woman climbs up a pyramid in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve at the Calakmul Mayan ruins in the Yuca...

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Train endangers some of Mexico’s oldest pre-historic sites

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

July 19, 2022504 Views

The Mexican government has invoked national security powers to forge ahead with a tourist train along the Caribbean coast that threatens extensive caves where some of the oldest human remains in North America have been discovered. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is racing to finish his Maya Train project in the remaining two years of his term over the objections of environmentalists, cave divers and archaeologists. The government had paused the project earlier this year after activists won a court injunction against the route, because it cut a swath through the jungle for tracks without previously filing an environmental impact statement. FILE PHOTO: Rogelio Jiménez Pons, director of Fonatur, points to photos of a planned train through the Yucatan Peninsula, during an inter...