Even in the travel brochures Tulum’s beaches don’t need a retouching: dazzling white sand from shell limestone in front of a turquoise sea (at least when they are not buried under Sargassum as it is has often been the case for years now).
In contrast to the large hotel complexes of the northern Riviera Maya, which often have several hundred rooms, the small bungalow hotels with their few rooms, often built as freestanding rustic cabins, seem almost idyllic. And this is what you pay for ….
Ideal are the cabañas of Tulum for honeymooners and couples, only a few of them meet the needs of (small) children.
If you do not want to spend your entire life on the beach, you should opt for a rental car to explore the hinterland and the remote coastal landscapes further south, or just to have an alternative to the hotel restaurant at dinner. If you have a rental car, you can also spend the night in Tulúm Pueblo.
The ruins of Tulúm were an important port of the Mayan, as well as a commercial and religious center. Unprecedented is their location on rocks above the turquoise Caribbean Sea. Tulúm, which was also called Zama (Dawn), came to full flower only between 1200 and 1400 AD. And, unlike most Mayan towns, was still inhabited on the arrival of the Spaniards.
Since the ruins are located in the action radius of the tourist masses of Cancún and Playa del Carmen, they are populated daily by true legions, although the buildings themselves are not exactly spectacular and their architecture seems almost clumsy. Already on arrival, the hype at the parking lot with the various souvenir shops and innumerable travel busses gives an impression of what the visitor awaits at the site which is landwards enclosed by a wall. It is advisable to be there early in the morning to avoid at least the biggest tourist rush (and the midday heat).