Cancun, Mexico

Cancun is a coastal city in Mexico's easternmost state, Quintana Roo. It is a world renowned tourist resort with modern beachfront hotels surrounded by the Bahia de Mujeres (Bay of Women), the Caribbean Sea, and the Nichupte and Bojorquez lagoons. Four million visitors arrive each year in an average of 190 flights daily. The mainland downtown commercial section (Cancun City), connected to the island by two bridges, has broad avenues lined with whitewashed shops, restaurants, and hotels.

Aerial view of Cancun. Photo credit: lxine. Check out more photos of all our featured destinations in our photo gallery.

Spring Break

Cancun experiences a flood of college students (usually from the United States) during Spring Break. June has a similar trend with incoming high school seniors traveling to Cancun to celebrate their Senior Trip. The drinking age in Mexico is 18.

Hotels and Restaurants

There are about 140 hotels with 24,000 rooms and 380 restaurants in Cancun. The hotel zone is one of the most exclusive internationally, with upmarket restaurants and bars which have catered to quite a number celebrities. The hotel zone tends to be on the expensive side, with many all-inclusive resorts, but is generally worth it for thr private beach access and luxurious settings. International brands in Downtown area are Radisson Hacienda Cancun, Best Western Plaza Caribe, Oasis America.

Cancun's hotel zone also has an interactive aquarium where visitors can see the marine diversity of the area, swim with dolphins and feed sharks.

Clubs and Bars

Cancun has a variety of clubs. Some tourist hot spots are: Coco Bongo, Dady Rock and Dady O, Senor Frogs, The City, and Bulldog Cafe. There are also gay clubs like Karamba or Glow.

Attractions and Events

Tulum

Approximately a two hour drive from Cancun is Tulum, the ancient ruins that loom along a cliff on the crystal clear coastline. Tulum is a gorgeous site that is a must see.

Chichen Itza

Approximately a three hour drive from Cancun is Chichen Itza, a large pre-Columbian archaeological site built by the Maya civilization, located in the northern center of the Yucatan Peninsula, present-day Mexico.

From roughly 600 CE in the middle of the Maya Classic period, it was a major city, achieving its greatest growth and power after the Maya sites of the central lowlands to the south had already collapsed. The Postclassic occupation at the site saw extensive additions of structures and motifs in a style more reminiscent of Central Mexican / "Toltec" cultures. This was once thought to have been representative of direct migration or even conquest from central Mexico, but most contemporary interpretations view the presence of these "non-Maya" styles more as the result of cultural diffusion. Revolt and civil war among the Maya in 1221 CE, evidenced by archeological findings of burned buildings, led to Chichen Itza's decline and rulership over Yucatan shifted to Mayapan. It was briefly conquered and occupied by Spanish Conquistador Francisco de Montejo in 1531 CE.

According to the American Anthropological Association, the actual ruins of Chichen Itza are federal property; the land under them, however, is co-owned as communal property by the town of Piste and as private property by the Barbachanos, which has been one of the most powerful families in Yucatán since the early 19th century.

Climate

The temperature of the city is warm, moderated by the marine breeze which circulates through its avenues. The temperatures are typically between 26°C and 36°C (78.8°F and 96.8°F).

What you need to know

The main language in Cancun is Spanish, although English is widely spoken throughout the tourist areas. Mayan dialects are also spoken between some workers and people born in the Yucatán peninsula.

Most establishments accept U.S. dollars, even though the Mexican Peso is the official currency.

History and Development

In the early 1950s, Cancun was an almost insignificant island just off the Caribbean Sea coast of the Yucata peninsula, home to three caretakers of a coconut plantation and small Pre-Columbian ruins of the Maya civilization. The government of Mexico decided to develop a tourist resort on Cancun, which was originally financed by a USD $27 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank. A causeway was built to link Cancun to the mainland, and an international airport was built, along with what was at first a model city for workers, complete with housing, schools and medical facilities. The city was built after the project developed by architects Agustin Landa Verdugo and Enrique Landa Verdugo, who also designed the city's airport and its first hotel. On the opposite side of the island from the Caribbean Sea is the Nichupte Lagoon, which is used for boat and snorkelling tours of the area.

Although many international publications now spell Cancun as Cancun, in the area itself it is usually Cancun in Spanish and Cancun in English. This is probably a result of the fact that English-language type faces available in the early days of Cancun did not have accented characters, or the operators did not know how to access them because the keyboard codes were different from the ones they were accustomed to using.

Although found on several early maps as some variant of Cancun, one of the earliest known references called it Cancuen. There's also a site in Guatemala called Cancuen. Cancuen refers to a snake totem, usually identified with Kukulcan or Quetzalcoatl (the Plumed Serpent). The romanization of Mayan words varies, but it is common to use an apostrophe to indicate a kind of glottal stop. It is possible that some Yucatecan or Mexican Mayanist wrote the name as Cancu'en, which was turned into Cancun by someone at the predecessor of Fonatur, the Mexican government tourism development fund that created Cancun. The belief that Cancun means "nido de viboras" (nest of snakes) is modern folklore, according to long-time resident Jules Siegel, author of the Cancun User's Guide.

Development of Cancun started in 1970 and grew rapidly in the 1980s. Unfortunately, the original very sensible master plan was repeatedly modified and, on the mainland, often ignored. Siegel, who was the translator of Fernando Mart's "Cancun, Fantasy of Bankers" says that municipal authorities have struggled to provide public services for the constant influx of people, as well as to control squatters and irregular developments, which now occupy an estimated ten to fifteen percent of the mainland area on the fringes of the city.

Despite initial skepticism that forced the Mexican government to finance the first eight hotels, Cancun soon attracted investors from all over the world, but approximately 70% of the Hotel Zone properties are owned by Mexicans, many of them local residents, Siegel says. The figure is close to 100% for the mainland. Some observers believe that the resort is foreign-owned because they are confused by the hotel operating companies, which are international companies that supply administration and marketing services. They do not usually own the hotels themselves. Even outlets of restaurant chains such as McDonald's and Domino's Pizza are Mexican-owned.

The city has grown rapidly over the past thirty years to become a city of approximately 900,000 residents, covering the former island and the nearby mainland. Most 'cancunenses' here are from Yucatan and other Mexican states. A growing number are from the rest of America and Europe.

The city Cancun and its flourishing tourism industry were heavily damaged by Hurricane Wilma, which hit the area on October 22, 2005. As of August 1, 2006; nearly all the hotels/resorts are open for business though some are still in the process of restoring guest services such as spas, restaurants, gift shops, and business centers.

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