Cancún is a coastal city in Mexico’s easternmost state, Quintana Roo. It is the municipal seat of Benito Juárez municipality and a world renowned tourist resort. The city has grown rapidly over the past thirty years to become a city of approximately half a million residents, covering the former island and the nearby mainland. There are actually very few true ‘cancunenses’ (people originally from Cancún) because of the rate at which the resort and its service areas grew. Most people living here are from mainland Mexico and a growing number are from the rest of America and Europe.
In Cancún there are about 140 hotels with 24,000 rooms and 380 restaurants. Three million visitors arrive each year in an average of 190 flights daily. The hotel zone is one of the most exclusive internationally, with upmarket restaurants, bars, and the like which have catered for quite a number of the rich and famous. The hotel zone tends to be rather expensive as it is aimed at visitors and relies on the all inclusive hotels to keep them all in this area allowing prices to soar. Downtown is home to less expensive places to shop like Walmart, Comercial Mexicana and Soriana, not to mention several flea markets like the one in the hotel zone.
Mexico resorts getting back in the swim
Tourism officials in the hurricane-battered Mexican state of Quintana Roo hope to have 80 percent of the accommodations and amenities in the affected Caribbean coast resorts fully operational by February.
The Yucatan Peninsula state, home to tourism magnets Cancun, Cozumel and the Riviera Maya, accounts for about 36 percent of Mexico's nearly $11 billion tourism industry, according to Quintana Roo tourism secretary Gabriela Rodriguez.
Hurricane Wilma hit Cancun the hardest in late October, closing most of its hotel rooms. Between 8,000 and 10,000 of the city's approximately 25,000 hotel rooms are now open, and officials expect
Puerto Juarez
About 3 km north of Cancun, Puerto Juarez is the dock for the cheaper ferry services to Isla Mujeres; there is also a bus terminal, but services are more frequent from Colour map 4, grid A3 Cancun. There are, many buses between Cancun and Puerto Juarez, for example No 8 opposite the bus terminal (US$0.70), but when the ferries arrive from Isla Mujeres there are many more taxis than buses (taxi fare should be no more than US$2, beware overcharging).
Paamul, just south of Playa del Carmen and about 92 km south of Cancun, is a fine beach on a bay, planned for development, with chalets (C with bath, fan, terrace for hammocks, comfortable, pretty, clean, recommended) and campsites (recom¬mended). There is snorkelling and diving and a reef a few metres offshore. Sec¬ond-class buses from Cancun and Playa del Carmen pass.
Hurricane Wilma slams into mainland Mexico
Ocean waves surged over the narrow strip of land that holds Cancun's resort hotels as Hurricane Wilma slammed into Mexican mainland, where some 30,000 tourists huddled in hotels and shelters amid shrieking winds and shattering glass.
The eye of the category 3 storm, which had already killed 13 people, first slammed into Cozumel Island _ the worst-hit, and now cut off _ and then headed north-northwest onto the mainland near the beach town of Playa de Carmen, south of Cancun.
The howling winds caused severe damage in Playa de Carmen, flattening dozens of wood-and-tarpaper
Six dead as Wilma batters Mexico
At least six people have died as Hurricane Wilma lingers over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Reuters reports.
Two deaths been reported on the island on the island of Cozumel, and one person died in Cancun when a gust of wind blew out a window.
In the resort town of Playa del Carmen, two people died when a gas tank exploded, while to the west of the Yucatan Peninsula, a large tree branch crushed a man to death.
The slow-moving storm has sent waves as high as the third storey of some hotels in the resort of
There are several international airports, the two busiest ones being Mexico City and Cancun, both of which receive frequent flights from Europe, North America and South America and the Caribbean.
Cancun
The ever-expanding resort of Cancun (pop 100, 000) is built on Quintana Roo's northeast coast overlooking the blue waters of the Caribbean. Size and glitz are the operating principles here, and the resort is beginning to have crowding problems that resemble Fort Lauderdale at the height of Spring Break. There is nothing older than 1970 in Cancun, except for some tiny vestiges of Mayan temples; for antiquity or colonial sights, you have to head west to Yucatan or south to Tulum and Coba. Cancun is divided into downtown and the hotel zone. The latter is a 33-kilometer (21-mile)-long sandbar (hat
Akumal
A luxury resort, 102 km south of Cancun, 20 km north of Tulum, Akumal is reached easily by bus from there or from Playa del Carmen (30 minutes). There is a small lagoon 3 km north of Akumal, good snorkelling.
Sleeping and eating L Hotel Club Akumal Caribe. One of many luxury hotels, villas and condos which can be booked in the US through Caribbean Fantasy, PO Box 7606, Loveland, Colorado 80537-0606, caribbfan@aol.com, accommodation is all LL-AL.
Holbox Island
Also north of Valladolid, but in the neighbouring state of Quintana Roo, turn off the
road to Puerto Juarez after Nuevo Xcan (seepage 566), to Holbox Island. Buses to
Chiquila for boats, three times a day, also direct from Tizimi'n at 1130, connecting
Holbox 0600 and 1430, one hour, returning to Chiquila at 0500 and 1300. A bus to Merida connects with the 0500 ferry. If you miss the ferry a fisherman will probably take you (for about US$14).
You can leave your car in the care of the harbour master for a small charge; his house
is east
Punta Sam
A strip of coastline north of Punta Sam is officially part of Isla Mujeres. It is being developed as a luxury resort, but without the high-rise buildings of Cancun's hotel zone. Accommodation will be in luxury bungalows and cabanas. The first of these, now completed, is AL Villas Chalet Maya, Km 9 Punta Sam Highway (for reservations, contact COMITSA, Km 12.5, Zona Hotelera, Cancun, T851418, F851498). Ocean views, elaborate ethnic interiors, pool, beach, restaurant.
