Cancún travel info

Cancún's Hotel Zone looks like a number 7 drawn on the sea. Hotels line a sandbar barely a few hundred metres wide for almost 22 km, so one window looks onto the mint-green Caribbean and the other onto Nichupté Lagoon, which goes pink at sunset. Get to the beach early and the sand is fine as flour, cool enough to walk on at noon, and staff are already lining up loungers under the palapas.

Twenty minutes inland by bus is a different city. Downtown, El Centro, fills Parque de las Palapas with marquesita carts every evening, and al pastor pork turns on its spit under a dripping pineapple. Hotel Zone menus quote dollars; here it's pesos. The R-1 bus shuttles between the two worlds all day.

Cancún is also a launch pad. Buses and colectivos run down the coast to Playa del Carmen and Tulum, the Tren Maya (opened late 2023) heads inland from the airport across the Yucatán, and Isla Mujeres is a 20-minute ferry ride away. For most travellers the flight is the long part, but once the all-inclusive wristband goes on, it fades fast.

Cancún International Airport (CUN)