Playa Ruinas

Playa Ruinas lies at the foot of the cliff below the archaeological zone at Tulum, on Mexico's Caribbean coast. It is a short crescent of white sand in a notch in the limestone, with the walled Maya city standing directly above it.

Tulum was a port. The city was occupied principally between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and was a trading centre on the coastal route, and this beach — one of very few landing places along a cliff coast — is the practical reason the city is where it is. Canoes carrying obsidian, jade, cotton and salt came ashore here, and the Castillo above may have functioned as a navigation marker through a gap in the reef.

The beach is small, reef-protected and calm, with fine coral sand. Access is through the archaeological site, on a wooden stair, and it therefore follows the site's opening hours and closures — the beach has been shut for extended periods for conservation and for stair repairs, and the position changes. Sargassum affects it as it does the whole coast. The main hotel road south is a separate proposition entirely, and the contrast between a beach you reach through an archaeological site and one you reach through a hotel gate is the clearest thing about how this coast has developed.

There is nothing built on the sand and nothing may be. The site charges admission, has fixed hours, and the beach closes when it does.

The only beach in the Maya world with a walled city above it, and it closes when the site does. Come at opening, see the ruins in the cool, and swim before the buses arrive from Cancún. The hotel road south is a different place with different prices and no archaeology. Cobá and the cenotes inland fill the afternoon once the site closes, and the town on the highway is where ordinary prices live.