| Cancun
and the Costa Maya, on the Caribbean side of Mexico's Yucatan
Peninsula, is a modern playground with spectacular resorts.
A fishing village of 120 people as recently as 1970, CANCUN
is now a city with a resident population of half a million and
receives almost two million visitors a year. Cancun is
marginally closer to Miami than it is to Mexico City, and if you
come on an all-inclusive package tour the place has a lot to
offer: striking modern hotels on white-sand beaches; high-class
entertainment including parachuting, jet-skiing, scuba-diving
and golf; a hectic nightlife; and from here much of the rest of
the Yucatan is easily accessible.
There are, in effect, two quite separate parts to Cancun: the
zone commercial downtown - the shopping and residential center
which, as it gets older, is becoming genuinely earthy - and the
hotel zone, a string of hotels and tourist amenities around
"Cancun Island", actually a narrow strip of sandy land
connected to the mainland at each end by causeways. It encloses
a huge lagoon, so there's water on both sides.
|