The famous Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza is going to be closed again.
Why? Well, it seems that some tourists have been behaving poorly on vacation in Mexico. Thereby, they have made officials decide to close one of the country’s most popular archaeological sites.
Based upon what we hear from the Associated Press, officials in Mexico have plans to shut down the mentioned site on the Yucatan Peninsula from April 1 through April 4 in hopes of crashing down the spread of COVID-19.
Acting police chief in Quintana Roo, Lucio Hernández Gutiérrez says that “It is regrettable to see how disorderly things have become. It was truly exasperating to see hundreds of people walking everywhere without face masks.” And so, he pointed out the tourists as the worst offenders.
Nowadays, Chichen Itza is Mexico’s second-most visited archaeological site and typically has about two million visitors a year.
This UNESCO World Heritage Site is among the more popular day trips for visitors to Cancun which is one of the limited vacation destinations open to travellers right now.
In early 2020, Mexican administrators closed the Chichen Itza site when the whole world was banning travelling and having border restrictions to decontaminate the coronavirus pandemic.
After a while, in September, Chichen Itza reopened with capacity restrictions, temperature checks, and face mask requirements.
Chichen Itza was a key central point in the Northern Maya Lowlands. The site shows several architectural styles, reminiscent of styles seen in central Mexico and of the Puuc and Chenes styles of the Northern Maya lowlands.
It was once thought that the presence of central Mexican style, has been a solid proof of direct migration or even conquest from central Mexico, but other present-day interpretations see this as non-Maya style and believe the Chichen Itza site is the result of cultural diffusion.