Cancún & Riviera Maya

Cancún was drawn on paper in 1970 — a government's plan for a resort on an empty barrier island shaped like a seven, between a lagoon and a sea the color of a swimming pool — and it worked so well that the whole coast south of it followed: the Riviera Maya, a hundred and thirty kilometres of white sand over a limestone shelf so perforated with cenotes, the fresh-water sinkholes the Maya held sacred, that the ground itself is a swimming hole. Offshore runs the second-largest reef on Earth; inland stand Cobá, Chichén Itzá and, on its own cliff over the sea, the walled port of Tulum.

The traveller lands in the hotel zone and leaves it early: to Isla Mujeres by ferry for a slower island and, in summer, the whale sharks; to Puerto Morelos for the reef without the crowd; to Playa del Carmen for the Quinta Avenida and the boat to Cozumel's walls of coral; to the cenotes — Dos Ojos, the Gran Cenote, any one a farmer opens — for water so clear the swimmer seems to fly; to Tulum at opening hour, before the buses; to Cobá on a rented bicycle among the trees; and, for one long day, to Chichén Itzá, whose serpent of light descends the pyramid twice a year and whose stones impress at any hour.

The Guide's honesty: the sargassum arrives most years from late spring to early autumn and can turn a postcard beach brown for weeks — the west-facing beaches of Isla Mujeres and Cozumel and the cenotes are the answer —; September is the heart of the hurricane season; the resort economy quotes in dollars and adds tips, and the timeshare hawkers begin at the airport, where a firm 'no, gracias' is the only sentence needed; the ADO buses and the new Maya train link the coast cheaply; and the reef is alive and fragile — reef-safe cream, and no touching, keeps it so.