DK Travel : Cancún and the Yucatán

Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula has a special atmosphere and an immense variety of attractions, including some of the world’s best beaches and diving areas. The modern, glittering resorts of the east coast’s “Mayan Riviera” lie alongside charming old Spanish Colonial towns, sleepy Mayan villages, and the awesome remains of ancient civilizations.

Restaurante Vaselina, San Felipe

A big, unfussy, barn-like place on the seafront with plain tables where you can try wonderfully fresh, fat shrimp, octopus, and conch.
Richards Steaks and Pizza, Puerto Aventuras

This restaurant is located in a cabaña with a sea view. The menu offers a variety of typical American and Mexican dishes.
Río Lagartos

No well-organized facilities, but boatmen here will show you their fishing grounds as well as the flamingo lagoons.
Río Lagartos

A huge, long, narrow lagoon of creeks, mangroves, and mud-and salt-flats along the north coast of Yucatán that is tinged pink with colonies of 20,000 flamingos in the peak August breeding season. Fascinating, great-value boat trips are run from Río Lagartos and nearby San Felipe.
Río Lagartos

This quiet village on the remote north coast is at the head of over 20 km (12 miles) of man-grove lagoon and mud flats, with the Yucatán’s largest colonies of flamingos and a dazzling variety of other birds. Local boatmen provide good-value tours (see also Río Lagartos, Río Lagartos and San Felipe).
Río Lagartos and San Felipe

Celebrated for the spectacular flocks of flamingos in the lagoon to their east (see Río Lagartos), these villages delight visitors with their unhurried, easy-going style. Great seafood restaurants too, as well as some pleasant small hotels, and, from San Felipe, wonderful sunsets (see Río Lagartos, San Felipe).
Ritz Carlton, Cancún

Top of the scale for sheer luxury in Cancún, the Ritz Carlton looks like the biggest Italian Renaissance palace ever built. All 365 rooms have ocean views, balconies, or terraces, and there’s a private beach and five restaurants.
Road from Boca Paila to Punta Allen

One for the adventurous – one of the bumpiest, most rutted, overgrown and deserted roads in the Yucatán – with fabulous vistas of sea, sky, and forest.
Roots, Cancún

A dark, Boho-ish little bar with a Latin-jazz soundtrack. Roots offers the promise of “food, music, and art”. There’s a clutch of other intimate, buzzing bars on the same street, just off Avenida Tulum.
Sacred Cenote, Chichén Itzá

The most celebrated cenote in the Yucatán, the giant sacred well at Chichén (see Sacred Cenote), has long been said to have been a place of human sacrifice. The cenote was used only for ritual purposes, perhaps as a channel to the Underworld, since the city’s drinking water came from the Xtoloc Cenote, near the Caracol.

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