Excerpts from Backpacker Magazine

Selections from the article, "You'll Like Yucatan," December 2005.

The Yucatán Peninsula is best known for major tourist attractions like the beaches of Cancún and the towering pyramid at Chichén Itzá, but it’s a veritable maze of Mayan mysteries and delights.

This eastern tip of the curving horn of Mexico faces the Caribbean Sea to the east and the Gulf of Mexico to the west and north. Until the 1960s, it truly was a place apart, as roads did not connect the Yucatán with central Mexico. It’s still very much the frontier, a swath of untamed greenery that forms a place apart from the rest of the country. As a result, residents were left to develop their own worldview, one that looked to Europe and Cuba for cultural cues, while taking pride in the indigenous Maya culture. Today, it’s not uncommon for people born in this region to say they’re 'yucatecos' first, mexicanos second.

Maya tradition is palpable in remote, timeless villages of thatch-roof 'palapa' homes, but also in shopping malls, political campaigns and TV advertisements. Although the Maya as a people are by no means free of the poverty borne disproportionately by indigenous cultures throughout the country, many Maya have prospered, and their culture is incredibly influential, as all yucatecos use Maya vocabulary, eat Maya cuisine and generally take pride in living in “the land of the pheasant and the deer,” as the Maya have called their richly forested terrain for centuries.

Travel in the Yucatán ranges from blazingly easy, along smooth toll highways in ultra-cushy buses, to virtually impossible, as rattletrap minivans packed with machete-carrying farmers get mired in muddy tracks. In the latter case, you may be the only passenger remotely upset, as there’s a general sense that minor annoyances really are minor, and that there’s always something else to do in the meantime. This laid-back attitude can be intensely frustrating - or wonderfully relaxing, if you give in to it.

Visitors may also be put off by the extremes of wealth and poverty, though it is not as visible here as in the rest of Mexico; similarly, the smog, slums and crime that mark Mexico City are not nearly as evident in the metropolises of the Yucatán, which are generally kept meticulously clean and have relatively few poor areas. Violent crime is almost non-existent, and for the most part this is a friendly and enormously enjoyable place to visit. Women travellers in particular will appreciate the overall lack of the machismo culture so common in central Mexico; in fact, modesty and almost formal politeness are the norm.

Where to go:
Cancún, the largest tourist destination in the Yucatán, has a reputa­tion as a spring-breaker’s debauch, but it offers much more: as a built-from-scratch city carved out of the jungle in the 1970s, it’s an interesting urban experiment that also happens to have beautiful beaches and world-class hotels and restaurants. Continuing down the Carib­bean coast leads to less frenetic towns, such as Playa del Carmen, Tulum and San Miguel, on the reef-ringed island of Cozumel, and eventually the utter isolation of the Costa Maya, near Mexico’s border with Belize.

If it’s wildlife you’re after, a number of nature reserves are sanctuaries for countless colourful birds and mammals. The Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, on the Caribbean coast, comprises a particularly diverse range of eco-systems, while Ría Celestún and Ría Lagartos (on the west and north Gulf coasts, respectively) enclose bird-filled estuaries.

Divers shouldn’t miss Cozumel, where lush coral gardens rim the coast; the growths are an outlying part of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the longest barrier reef in the western hemisphere, running along the Caribbean coast from just south of Cancún all the way to Honduras.

On The Beach:
The crystalline white sands of the Yucatán’s Caribbean coast are so transfixingly beautiful that many visitors never go further than their sun chairs for the whole of their vacation. The coast between Cancún and Tulum, known as the Riviera Maya complies with the best images of the Caribbean - all glassy water and broad sand; as a result, though, development is somewhat dense, and isolated beaches are now quite rare.

Farther south, the Costa Maya around Mahahual and Xcalak offers isolation, but the beaches are narrower and shaded in many places by pine trees, not palms. Another less crowded alternative is the Gulf coast, along the north and west sides of the peninsula, where the water is not quite so clear but you can enjoy it in perfect solitude. In any case, all of the beaches in Mexico are technically public, and you may lay down your towel anywhere you like. Some hotels will let you use their beach furniture if you order from the bar; elsewhere, beach clubs rent chairs and serve food and drinks, usually for a modest fee.

When to go:
Winter is the traditional tourist season, with dry air, mild temperatures and clear skies, and in the beach resorts like Cancún and Playa del Carmen, hotels are packed from late December to April.