Riviera Maya: Introduction: Overview: Riviera Maya

Riviera Maya

No one remembers the name of the visitor who suggested rebaptizing the Costa Maya—a corridor of jungle and beach that fronts the limpid Caribbean along the Yucatán peninsula—as the more evocative Riviera Maya, but in the mid-’90s the new title kicked off a transformation that turned this stretch of gorgeous coastline into one of the fastest-growing resort areas in Mexico. A rose by any other name, indeed. Driving today on Carretera 307, the area’s main—and only—thoroughfare, which begins in Cancún and runs some eighty miles south to Tulum, you can’t help but be amazed at the building frenzy that is adding new hotel rooms at breakneck speed (by the year 2025, there will supposedly be 110,000 of them along the Caribbean coast). The constructions range from thoughtful ecoconscious projects to all-inclusive megaresorts, but the government professes to have learned its lesson from the mass-market mess of Cancún, whose concrete-block hotels were erected with little regulation or oversight in the 1970s.

With any luck the powers that be will keep their word, as this part of the Yucatán is rich in Mayan history and striking natural beauty. The peninsula formed 65 to 70 million years ago when the area was hit by a meteorite. It’s composed mainly of limestone bedrock, creating a fragile environment that has no surface rivers but instead boasts a network of underground cenotes, or sinkholes, which served as the Mayans’ main water supply. Just miles from the coast’s exclusive resorts, which offer every imaginable creature comfort, the jungle looms wild and, to a great extent, untouched. The celebrated Mayan archeological sites of Cobá and Chichen Itzá are sheltered within the maze of lush tropical vegetation (my driver told me the area holds ruins not yet excavated, so deeply are they hidden), as are small Mayan villages whose inhabitants still speak the language and keep alive the traditions and rituals of their forefathers. The area’s complex ecosystem is perhaps best admired in the 1.3 million–acre Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, a multihabitat UNESCO World Heritage site that encompasses everything from wetlands and tropical forests to mangrove swamps and coastal savannas.

And then, of course, there are the famous white-sand beaches and the Caribbean, a flowing tapestry of translucent blues and piercing greens that mesmerizes those lounging on its powdery shore. Whether you call it Costa or Riviera, the Yucatán coast is one of the most beautiful parts of Mexico, if not the world, and one can only hope that it continues being developed in a thoughtful way so that its embarrassment of riches can be enjoyed by generations of travelers to come.