Riviera Maya

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Riviera Maya, Mexico.

"Riviera Maya" is a tourism district following the coastal Highway 400 which parallels the Caribbean coastline of Quintana Roo, Mexico. This district historically started at at the city of Playa del Carmen and ended at the village of Tulum, although the towns of Puerto Morelos situated to the north and between Playa del Carmen and Cancun as well as the town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto situated 40 km to the south of Tulum are both currently being promoted as part of the Riviera Maya tourist corridor. The Riviera Maya was originally called the Cancun - Tulum corridor, but in 1999 it was renamed as the Riviera Maya with the aid of Lic. Miguel Ramón Martín Azueta who at the time was the mayor of the municipality of Solidaridad. The municipality of Solidaridad includes the whole of the official Riviera Maya from Playa del Carmen in the north and south to Tulum and extending to some 40 km inland with the border with the state of Yucatan.

The Riviera Maya is famous for its large scale all-inclusive resorts and a historical tourism base of smaller boutique hotels along the highway 307 and on or near the beaches. Luxury travel entities have been instrumental in increasing luxury villa rentals and yacht charters in the area however these only represent a small fraction of the total tourism accommodation available.

Government development plans include establishing a number of medium sized cities of ~200 000 inhabitants within the Riviera Maya with initial planning spanning 20 years. Target areas for urbanization include the towns and villages of: Puerto Morelos (technically outside the Riviera Maya), Puerto Aventuras, Akumal, Chemuyil, and Tulum.

A major attraction throughout the Riviera Maya are coastal and reef aquatic activities dependent on the coastal water and the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System (aka Belize Barrier Reef) which begins near Cancun and continues along the whole length of the Riviera Maya continuing southward to Guatemala. This barrier reef system is the second longest in the world.

Activities at the most visited locations are snorkeling, horse riding, Jet Ski, Scuba dive, swimming in Cenotes, swimming with dolphins, Xcaret, Xel-Ha, Zip-line, Jungle tour, archeology.

[edit] Climate

The mean annual temperature is 25-26 °C (77 - 79 F). The climate is dominated by a rainy season from May through November, and within the dry season there is a period dominated by northerly winds, called El Norte, which usually occurs in the months of January and February. The maximum mean annual precipitation throughout the Yucatan Peninsula occurs along the coast of the Riviera Maya with 1.5 m (5 ft) of rainfall with a general decline to the NW with only 400 mm (1.3 feet) per year or less on the opposite side of the Peninsula. While the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan experiences a large number of tropical storms and hurricanes, the storm tracks and therefore landfalls of these are divergent to both the north (Cancun) and the south (south of Tulum and down to Belize) striking generally outside the Riviera Maya. Groundwater and therefore cenote water temperatures are 25 °C (76 F) year round. Coastal waters range from 26 °C (78 F) in January to 29 °C (84 F) in August.

[edit] Geography

The Riviera Maya is completely within the state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. The terrain is flat and covered by low tropical jungle. The geology is high purity carbonates down to a depth of 0.5 - 1.5 km below the surface. Mean annual rainfall is 1.5 m per year and the efficient infiltration results in the complete absence of any surface rivers. As is common in karst, underground river network have formed by dissolution, and these have been explored and mapped by cave diving through sinkhole collapses locally called cenotes. The whole of the Yucatan Peninsula is underlain by a density stratified coastal aquifer system with a lens shaped fresh water body floating on top of intruding saline water. The formation of caves (speleogenesis) within this coastal carbonate aquifer is principally associated with carbonate dissolution at the fresh-saline water contact within the aquifer. By 2008, the Quintana Roo Speleological Society (QRSS) reported more than 700 km of flooded cave passages within the limits of the Riviera Maya including the two longest underwater cave systems in the world of Sac Actun and Ox Bel Ha. The groundwater resources are accessed via the thousands of cenotes throughout the landscape, and these water resources supported the Maya civilizations and remains today the only natural source of potable water for this area.

The Caribbean coastline is a series of crescent shaped white sand beaches interrupted every 1 - 10 km by rocky headlands and inlets through which groundwater discharges into the coastal water that are locally called caletas. Large sections of the extensive mangrove swamps that lie behind the beaches and headlands are included in the areas scheduled for tourism development.