Beaches in Tulum

Two separate places with separate economies, a few kilometres apart. The first is a Maya port site on a cliff above the sea, walled, thirteenth-century, and with a small beach beneath it that closes when the ruins do. The second is a road of beach hotels running south from it, which grew from almost nothing through the 2010s and established an aesthetic — timber, rope, candlelight, no visible electricity — copied on coasts all over the world. Much of that road has never been connected to mains power or sewerage, which is a documented environmental problem lying directly behind the design, and the cenote system underneath it carries whatever is discharged into the reef. The town itself is inland on the highway and is where ordinary prices are; the drive between the two takes about fifteen minutes and the difference in cost is several times over. Practically: public access to the sand exists at Playa Paraíso and Playa Pescadores, while elsewhere the frontage is private in practice if not in law; sargassum between April and August is the recurring problem and forecasts are published daily; and the archaeological site closes in the afternoon, so the beach beneath it is a morning.

The two are different kinds of shore. The sand is coral sand throughout, and both sit on water a reef protects. Together they account for 10 km of shore. · computed from the 2 records below