Walk in the footsteps of Mayan kings: Cancun and the Riviera Maya
By Bob Schulman
Photo courtesy of Cancun CVB.
The captain's announcement comes over the P.A.: “Folks, we've begun our descent to Cancun International Airport.”
Heads twist, crane and bob around the windows as Cancun's famous “7”-shaped island comes into view below the plane. Even repeat visitors are wowed by the sight of the resort's 14 miles of luxury hotels, many built to look like Mayan pyramids, Moorish castles and Andalusian palaces.
Lower down, you can see those powdery white sands you've heard so much about, and – right off the travel posters – those amazing blue-green waters of the Caribbean.
The plane banks, and there's another eye-popper down there: A sprawling metropolis of close to 800,000 people on the mainland side of a short causeway from the island.
So far, all the things you've heard about Cancun are right on the money. You can hardly wait to wiggle your toes in that talcum-like sand.
Inside the terminal, after customs and immigration checks you're let loose in the main lobby where there's an army of sales reps waiting to load you down with brochures. The handouts come in all shapes and sizes, all extolling the wonders of everything there is to do, watch, catch, feel, smell and of course buy in Cancun.
If watersports are your bag, you'll find booklets on diving and snorkeling adventures, pirate cruises, submarine rides, big game fishing, paragliding, wind surfing and swimming with dolphins, sting rays and giant whalesharks.
The brochure barrage continues with fliers offering trips to the ruins of once-great Mayan cities. One tour takes you out in the jungle to the huge archaeological complex at Chichen-Itza, the home town of the chief Mayan god Kukulcan. Or you can take a shot at climbing a 14-story-high monster pyramid at Coba, where 100,000 people once lived, prayed to their gods and played ballgames in which the losers lost a lot more than the game.
Pyramid of Kukulcan. Photo by Bob Schulman.
A particularly classy pamphlet lures you to the green delights and tricky twists of the 13 golf courses around Cancun. Another lists hundreds of restaurants with menus running from Mayan favorites such as grilled sea bass swimming in a sizzling hot pepper sauce to European gourmet dishes with long names sprinkled with di's, alla's, con's and und's. Still another steers you to those dozens of jam-packed, block-long discos that double as the poster children for Cancun's fabled nightlife.
It's hard to imagine that just 40 years ago, when the first Earthlings were walking on the moon and when Boomers were coming of age at Woodstock, the only people living around these parts were a few farmers. Cancun Island was a strip of barren sand dunes, not even marked on maps of the area. And there was no city on the mainland.
How Cancun came about
In 1969, the Mexican government decided to jump start its until-then rather modest tourism business. Super-resorts – built from scratch – would be the name of the game. Miles of beaches would be lined with luxurious but environmentally friendly hotels. Airline flights from cities around the globe would make it easy to get there. And there’d be fun things to see and do for everyone, from bakers to bankers.
Government researchers scampered around the country for two years collecting data on fresh water sources, beach quality, ecological concerns and the like – even insect populations – from possible resort locations. The facts and figures went into a computer, and out came a number of top-rated sites. First on the list was a remote spot at the tip of eastern Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula called Kaank'uun by the ancient Mayans.
Re-tagged with the more marketable name of Cancun, the resort began taking shape in 1972 as sand dunes and mangrove jungles gave way to roads, sidewalks, power lines and water systems. The first hotel opened two years later.
Boomers may remember the award-winning ads used to debut Cancun. They showed a pristine beach stretching as far as you could see, disturbed only by a single trail of footprints in the sand. The headline read: “Walk in the footsteps of Mayan kings.”
Today, with guests bedding down in 150 hotels, all told with a whopping 29,000 rooms, Cancun is one of the most popular getaways on the planet.
More info: Visit the website of the Cancun Convention and Visitors Bureau at www.cancun.travel. Also check out the Cancun pages of the Mexico Tourism Board's site, www.visitmexico.com
The Riviera Maya: Cancun's little brother grows up
It’s what you don’t see that makes this place so special. No hotels, no restaurants, no discos, no shopping malls. They’re all here, of course – this is Mexico’s largest resort area. But when you’re driving down this 70-mile stretch of beaches south of Cancun, you mostly see an untouched tropical paradise edging the aquamarine waters of the Caribbean.
That's the whole idea. Local laws cap the height of the hundreds of hotels and other buildings scattered along the beaches at three stories. That’s low enough to keep them hidden from the highway by a half-mile-wide buffer of dense jungle and palm trees. What’s more, the hotel-resorts are spread out, thanks to another law that restricts development to only a small percentage of an owner’s land.
Welcome to the Riviera Maya, Cancun’s spunky sidekick on the Yucatan. The new kid on the sands started out in the mid-90s as a few secluded hideaways, collectively with about 1,500 rooms. Today, the room count tops 37,000, and it’s growing at a rate of thousands of rooms a year.
Most of the Riviera’s guests – 3.25 million last year – get there by van from Cancun International Airport. A few miles from the terminal, the road comes to a three-way junction. Going straight ahead will take you to Cancun Island, and a left or northern turn will take you to Cancun City.
Go right, or south, and you’re on your way to the Riviera. It starts 13 miles down the modern, four-lane highway at the little town of Puerto Morelos. From there, the highway runs through the Riviera’s lush foliage for an hour's drive to the Mayan ruins at Tulum.
Laid-back Puerto Morelos. Photo by Bob Schulman.
It’s mostly pretty quiet along the Riviera. Puerto Morelos, for instance, could be the national model for a sleepy Mexican fishing village. You can walk from one side of the town to the other in about 15 minutes, without spotting a McDonalds or a Pizza Hut. What you will see are some of the friendliest people in Mexico going about their business, mostly in shops around the town square.
Of course there’s a number of hot spots on the Riviera, too. About 20 miles south of Puerto Morelos, for instance, you’ll find the booming beach town of Playa del Carmen (population: 150,000), perhaps best known for its usually jammed half-mile-long “Fifth Avenue” shopping lane.
Jesus Martin was born there in 1978. He remembers Fifth Avenue when it was “a dirt road with not much on it,” and when the town had just one hotel, one restaurant and one drugstore. The city's main claim to fame was as the place to go to catch the ferry boat to the offshore island of Cozumel.
As Cancun and the Riviera grew, so did Playa del Carmen, recalls Martin (now the local director of tourism). Some small beachfront hotels began popping up in the 80s, and the town became known as “a funky little art colony.” You'll still see some artsy people in boutique shops scattered around town, but for the most part mainstream tourism has come to these parts. Close to 100 hotels and inns including a good number of luxury properties now dot Playa del Carmen's beaches and cobbled avenidas.
Other big tourist draws on the Riviera were once mainly the domain of nature lovers and archaeologists. For example, just down the highway from Playa del Carmen you'll find thousands of visitors wandering around the 200-acre quasi-Mayan theme park at Xcaret and rafting the underground rivers of a nearby park named Xplor.
A little further south is the sprawling marina, golf links and cafe-lined lagoons of Puerto Aventuras, followed by the diving haven at Akumal, the water wonderland of Xel-Ha and – at what's more or less the end of the Riviera – the once-remote Mayan ruins of Tulum (now Mexico’s third most-visited archaeological site).
Staying there: Visitors to Cancun and the Riviera bunk down in places ranging from thatched-roof cabanas for $25 a night to $1,000-and-up beachfront villas (complete with your own butler). Many hotels have Mayan themes, such as the pyramid-shaped Grand Oasis in Cancun. Some, like the Barcelo Maya Beach Resort on the Riviera, add a little humor here and there in signs around the property.
Reportedly among hotels with particularly high occupancy rates are Real Resorts' four all-inclusive properties in Cancun and Playa del Carmen. (See the sidebar story, A Royal Treat on the Yucatan.)
More Info: Visit the Riviera Maya Destination Marketing Office's website at www.rivieramaya.com or the Mexico Tourism Board at www.visitmexico.com.
A Royal Treat on the Yucatan
Story and photos by Bob Schulman
Real Royal Cancun
Hotel staffers holding their right hands over their hearts meet your airport van as it arrives at the Real Royal in Cancun. The clerk at the registration desk makes the same movement. So does the bellboy when he delivers your bags. It's a gesture you'll get from everyone else on the Real staff during your stay. What it means is, “From the bottom of our hearts, it is a pleasure to serve you.”
Besides gestures, lots of other special touches help rank the four Real hotels among the standout properties of Cancun and the Riviera Maya. For instance, company executives make no secret of the fact that the Reals “borrowed” some great ideas from other hotels. Like their extra-comfy mattresses (borrowed from Marriott), their take-your-pick of pillow softness (from Melia), their in-wall “magic box” for breakfast deliveries (from Cap Juluca) and their in-room Jacuzzis (from Palace Resorts).
And it's not by chance that the Reals' coffee shops look like the award-winning shop at the Wynn Las Vegas. “We took the best of the best for our customers,” says Vicky Iniesta, Real's sales director.
The company's two ultra-luxury properties, the 288-suite Royal Cancun and the 464-suite Royal Playa del Carmen on the nearby Riviera Maya, cater to couples. The other two hotels, the Gran Caribe Real (477 rooms) in Cancun and the Gran Porto Real (272 rooms) in Playa del Carmen, court the family market. All four properties are all-inclusives.
Real Royal Playa del Carmen
Romance is big business at the Real hotels – to he extent that couples planning to say “I do” at the two upper-end properties can call on a “Royal Romance Concierge” to help set everything up, from details of the ceremony to receptions complete with the Real's signature Royal Wedding Cake. So many nuptials are performed there that the company has stationed two civil judges on-site, one on the Royal property in Cancun and one at the Royal in Playa del Carmen.
Wedding packages offered at various price points feature about every kind of deluxe service you can think of, such as a moonlit dinner on the beach, an in-suite massage or a romantic cruise on a 55-foot yacht. Package prices range from $700 to $7,900 (plus the cost of your suite).
“If you like, we can even arrange marriages on an airplane,” says Iniesta.
Swapping vows on the beach.
Another wedding option lets couples experience how the ancient Mayans tied the knot. Included in the $1,000 package (besides such standard items as breakfast in bed, the Royal Wedding Cake and the reception) are the blessings of a Mayan “shaman” or high priest and a tequila cocktail toast with Mayan fruit tarts, all against the backdrop of ancient Mayan tunes piped in over the P.A. For another $300 they'll toss in four Mayan dancers dressed in precolonial garb.
That van you took to the hotel likely said Best Day Tours on the side. The tour company was founded by entrepreneur Fernando Garcia in 1984, at the time with two limos. From there, Garcia went into the hotel management business in 1986 while parlaying the tour fleet into 50 vans and four buses. He founded Real Resorts in 1993.
Chances are you'll hear Garcia's philosophy cited by a number of the hotel group's 2,400 employees during your stay. It goes: “Do everything with love. Love to God, love to your family, to your hotel, to your co-workers, and love to tourists.”
For the Real hotels – which boast some of the highest occupancy rates of the 500 or so hotels in Cancun and the Riviera Maya – love works.
