a 50-square-mile section of the overgrown landscape in Campeche, Mexico.
6,500 in a 50-square mile area...
thriving metropolis it seems- musta been something to see in it’s hayday-
I also was puzzled. Fifty square miles is a patch 5 x 10 miles, or slightly more than 7 miles square. So I strongly suspect they should have written 50 miles square.
I too have memories of my travels in Mexico in the later 1950s and ‘60s. First time traveled alone to Tenochtitlan and climbed the pyramid of the moon. Then I wandered about among the lower ruins, and eventually picked some prickly pears when I got hungry. A lot has been done since I was there as shown in pictures. Another trip then was to a village with no drivable road six miles outside San Cristobal del las Casas. I met people when we all stayed at the home of Franz Blom, an anthropologist. One man rented houses and we all rode out to this village. We asked the only Spanish speakers the Mayor and his 2 deputies for permission to take photos. We then photographed a religious celebration inside and outside a church that had not had a priest since the 1930s, Interesting mix of Christian and old religion.
A decade later my husband and I visited Oaxaca. We saw the Mixtec ruins in the lowland, and drove up to the Zapotec temples on the hilltop. My poor husband did not enjoy the view as he bent over a wall and fertilized the ground below with last nights under chilled chicken leftovers. Ah, memories! Then we drove south to Guatemala where I celebrated Montezuma’s revenge from a mistake I had made before leaving Mexico.