Mere decades ago, the Riviera Maya was a sparsely populated stretch of Mexico's Caribbean coastline dotted with fishing villages and little-visited Mayan ruins. These days it's Mexico's fastest-growing tourist destination.
Located on the southside of the Yucatan Peninsula, Riviera Maya is one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the western Caribbean. It's famous for white-sand beaches and crystal clear water, limestone caverns and underground rivers. The area also offers ancient Mayan ruins and pristine ecological wonders to explore like freshwater pools known as cenotes as well as nature parks and resorts with all the amenities. Offshore, a barrier reef that stretches all the way to southern Belize attracts scuba divers.
The main city of Riviera Maya is Playa del Carmen. Located in the heart of the destination, this once small fisherman’s village has now grown to a city with paved roads, large-scale all-inclusive resorts and all amenities a visitor could ask for. Playa del Carmen, simply called “Playa” by the locals, is a vibrant and lively town. The main street, the famous 5th Avenue, or ”La Quinta Avenida”, is more than 2 miles long and is completely pedestrian. Here you will find bars, nightclubs, shops, handcrafts, coffee houses and restaurants from every corner of the world for every budget whether it be a taco at the taco stand or a romantic candle lit dinner on the beach, there are plenty of options for everyone.
You can swim and snorkel during the day or just hang out at an outdoor cafe and people-watch. When the sun goes down, there's lively nightlife at funky venues, many run by expatriate Europeans and Americans, plus an increasing number of glitzy nightspots that used to only be found up the coast in Cancun. It's also where you catch the 45-minute ferry to Cozumel.
At Puerto Aventuras, another town along the coast, you'll find an excellent marina with berths for up to 250 boats and facilities for sport fishing and watersports. It's also home to the Riviera Maya's only maritime museum, which exhibits wreckage and artifacts collected from famous shipwrecks along the Mexican Caribbean coast dating back to the 16th century.
Another famous attraction along the coast is the area known as Tulum. This area is the center of ancient Mayan culture with magnificent ruins but it is also a good place to explore cenotes—underground sinkholes that are filled with crystal clear water. Ecoparks such as Xcaret, Xel-ha, Tres Rios and Croco Cun offer a variety of watersports activities and more opportunities to explore the flora and fauna of the coast.
History
The area that is now called the Riviera Maya formed part of an extensive Mayan trade route during the post-classic period, which lasted from about AD 1000 to 1550. The coastal Mayan cities of Tulum, Xcaret, Xaman-Ha (now Playa del Carmen) and Xel-Ha were important commercial and religious centers visited by seagoing Mayan traders.
Coba, located inland from Tulum, was the biggest and most powerful Mayan city in the northeastern Yucatan Peninsula. Europeans first set foot in the region in 1511, when a group of Spanish sailors was shipwrecked on the Caribbean coast. Most of them were killed by the area's inhabitants, but two men survived and were taken to live with the tribe.
One of the pair, Gonzalo Guerrero, married a Mayan woman and raised a family. Guerrero was later killed while helping the Maya fight their Spanish conquerors. The Spanish eventually succeeded in subjugating the Maya, forcefully converting them to Christianity and turning the Maya into virtual slaves.
The Maya rebelled against their brutal oppressors in the War of the Castes, which lasted more than 50 years (1847-1901). In 1850, a miraculous talking cross—later revealed as the work of a ventriloquist—in Chan Santa Cruz (now the Riviera Maya town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto) instructed the Maya to revolt in the name of their gods. The Mayan rebels managed to overcome the Spanish and drive them from Chan Santa Cruz.
For most of the 20th century, the Riviera Maya remained an isolated Mexican territory, with few inhabitants and poor roads. It was not until 1974, when Quintana Roo became a state and the Mexican government began to build the nearby resort of Cancun, that the Riviera Maya started to develop into a tourist destination in its own right.
The 1990s saw most of the Riviera Maya's roads paved, and a rapid rise in population and in the number of resorts. People from other parts of Mexico continue to migrate to the Riviera Maya, viewing it as a land of opportunity. After hurricanes and overdevelopment ravaged some sections of the coast over the past decade, more enlightened building practices, such as in the multi-resort Mayakoba development and the Tres Rios Resort, are leading to hotels better suited to sustainable tourism.
Nightlife
