Three days in Tulum: skip a beach club, swim in the caves instead
Two nights, based in the pueblo rather than the hotel road: the cenotes west of town, the pyramid and causeways at Coba, and the walled Maya port above the sea at opening time.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Tulum
- Places
- 7 across 3 days
The Yucatan has no rivers. Rain drains straight through the limestone into a network of flooded caves that runs for hundreds of kilometres under the forest, and where the roof of one has fallen in you get a cenote: a hole in the ground filled with fresh water so clear that the fish appear to be floating in air. Tulum sits on top of some of the best of them, and they are the reason to come.
The ruins are the other reason. Tulum was a walled port, occupied late in Maya history and still lived in when Spanish ships first sighted it from the sea, and it is the only Maya site of any size built on a cliff above the Caribbean. It is not the largest or the most impressive set of buildings in the region. It is unquestionably the best positioned, and everyone knows it, which is why the time you arrive matters more than anything else about the visit.
Three days does it: one afternoon to arrive and get wet, one long day inland at Coba and the cenotes on the way back, and an early last morning at the ruins before the coaches. Stay in the pueblo. The beach road is a strip of very expensive hotels three kilometres away from where the buses, the taquerias and the cash machines are.
Highlights
- Dropping off a wooden platform into a cenote and finding the water colder and clearer than the sea
- Coba's pyramid, standing in forest that has never been cleared, at the end of a raised stone causeway
- The clifftop ruins at eight in the morning, with the iguanas and nobody else
- A flooded cavern west of town with small turtles nosing about in the shallows of it
- Tacos al pastor in the pueblo for the price of a bottle of water on the beach road
Where to stay
Tulum, two nights
Tulum was a late Maya city, walled on three sides with the sea guarding the fourth, and it worked as a trading port for obsidian, jade and cotton moving up and down the coast by canoe. It was still occupied when Europeans arrived, which is unusual: most of the great sites inland had been abandoned centuries before.
The modern town is a much newer thing and it has changed faster than almost anywhere in Mexico. Inside twenty years it has gone from a scattering of cabanas to an international resort with a designer beach strip and an airport of its own, and the strain shows in the prices, the traffic on the highway and the arguments about water. None of which alters the fact that the swimming here is extraordinary.
Day by day
Day 1 in Tulum
A cenote on the edge of town, then the beach
Arrive, drop your bag and get in the water. The closest cenote to the pueblo is a short ride out on the Coba road: a small round hole in flat limestone with two smaller ones beside it, which is where the skull nickname comes from. There is a wooden platform to jump from, a rope ladder to get back out, and the water underneath is deep, black at the edges and startlingly cold.
It is not the prettiest cenote in the area and it is the right one to start with, because it takes an hour and gets the shock over with.
Then the sea, for contrast. The public beach south of the ruins is the one most people mean when they say Tulum beach: white sand, a shallow turquoise shelf, palms, and a row of beach clubs charging for loungers. You do not have to take one. The sand is public and the walk south from the access point gets quieter every hundred metres.
Eat in the pueblo. The stalls and small restaurants along the main street and around the market are where the town actually eats, they open in the evening, and they are a tenth of the price of the beach road.
- 14:30
Cenote Calavera
NatureA compact cenote a few kilometres out of the pueblo, named for the three openings in its roof. Platform to jump from, ladder to climb out, cold dark water below. An hour is plenty.
- 16:30
Playa Paraiso
NatureThe best known of the public beaches, with the classic view north to the ruins on their headland. Beach clubs line the top of it, but the sand itself is free and it thins out as you walk south.
- 20:00
Dinner in the pueblo
EatThe taquerias on and around the main street open from about six and stay busy late. Al pastor carved off the spit is the local default and costs almost nothing.
With more time: If you would rather swim in the sea than a cave on the first day, the next beach north is livelier, has boats going out for snorkelling trips, and puts you closer to the pueblo for the evening.
Day 2 in Tulum
Coba's pyramid and causeways, and the big cenote on the way home
Coba is forty-five minutes inland and it is the opposite of Tulum in every way. Where Tulum is small, tidy and on a cliff, Coba is enormous, half-excavated and still inside the forest: a city of tens of thousands at its height, spread over several square kilometres of jungle, linked by raised limestone causeways that ran dead straight for miles across the peninsula.
Its pyramid is the tallest structure in this part of the Yucatan. You cannot climb it any more, which was the right decision and disappoints people who read older guidebooks. Distances between the groups of buildings are long enough that most visitors hire a bicycle or a pedicab at the gate, and in this heat that is not laziness.
Go for opening. Two to three hours covers it, and then the Coba road back into Tulum is lined with cenotes, of which the big one nearest town is the best known: a series of open pools and caverns joined by a walkway, with snorkelling gear included, small turtles in the shallows and shafts of light coming down through the roof.
Back in town by late afternoon with time for a swim in the sea before dinner.
- 08:30
Coba
HistoricA huge Maya city in standing forest, only partly cleared, connected by dead-straight raised causeways. Bicycles and pedicabs wait at the gate, and you will want one: the site is far bigger than it looks on the map.
- 13:00
El Gran Cenote
VisitThe best known cenote on the Coba road and deservedly busy. Open pools, a cavern section you can snorkel into, turtles in the shallows. Masks and life jackets come with the ticket. Go on your way back, not at noon.
- 15:30
Late lunch on the way back
EatThree o'clock is a normal lunchtime here. The places along the highway on the edge of the pueblo do cochinita pibil and grilled fish for a fraction of what the beach road charges.
- 17:00
Playa Pescadores
VisitA working beach as well as a swimming one, with fishing boats pulled up on the sand and a livelier set of places to eat than its neighbour. Good for an hour at the end of the day.
With more time: There are several more cenotes along the same road and a pair of famous cave systems off the highway north of town, where the swimming is mostly underground and the guides run snorkel tours through the caverns. Any of them substitutes for the big one if it looks full when you pull in.
Day 3 in Tulum
The walled city above the sea, at opening
Be at the gate when it opens. This is the single piece of advice that matters about Tulum: the site is compact, has almost no shade, and takes the overflow of every coach tour on the Riviera Maya from mid-morning onwards. At eight the light is low on the cliff, the iguanas have the walls to themselves and you can stand in front of the Castillo without anyone in the frame. By eleven it is a queue in full sun.
The site itself is an hour and a half at a slow pace. A wall on three sides, the sea on the fourth, and a compact group of temples along the cliff edge, of which the tall one on the point is the one in every photograph. Look for the small building with the diving figure carved above its door, and for the way the whole plan is turned outward towards the water rather than inward towards a plaza.
Then go down the steps to the beach directly below the ruins, which is small, backed by the cliff and unlike anywhere else on this coast, and swim before the drive to the airport.
- 08:00
Tulum Archaeological Site
HistoricThe walled Maya port on its cliff. Compact, unshaded and best in the first hour after opening. The clifftop temple, the carved diving figure and the view straight down onto the water are the things to look for.
- 10:00
Playa Ruinas
VisitThe cove immediately under the ruins, reached by steps from the site. Small, sheltered, and the only place you can swim with a Maya temple on the rock above you.
- 11:30
Breakfast after the ruins
EatNothing near the gate is worth the money. Go back into the pueblo for eggs, refried beans and coffee at a fraction of the price, and eat properly before a flight.
With more time: With a late flight, the lagoon south of town is a good last swim: a wide shallow bowl of turquoise water with a deep blue circle in the middle, hammocks strung out over the shallows, and far fewer people than anywhere on the coast.
Before you go
Where to stay
There are effectively three Tulums. The pueblo sits on the highway and holds the bus stations, the supermarkets, the cheap rooms and most of the good food. The beach road, a few kilometres east, is a line of boutique and eco hotels along the sand, beautiful and startlingly expensive. Aldea Zama, in between, is where the newer apartments are.
Stay in the pueblo unless the beach road is specifically what you came for. Taxis to the sand are cheap, and the difference in what you pay for a bed and a plate of food is not small. The beach hotels also tend to be off-grid, which sounds romantic until the fans stop.
Getting there and getting around
Tulum got its own airport in December 2023, with domestic flights from Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara and direct services from a growing list of Canadian and US cities. Cancun airport is the alternative, about two hours north, with far more choice; ADO run comfortable coaches straight down the highway from the terminal.
In town, colectivos are the answer. These are shared vans running fixed routes along the highway and the Coba road for a few pesos, they leave when full, and you flag them down at the roadside. Bicycles work for the beach and the ruins. A car is only worth it if you want to reach several cenotes in a day without waiting.
Cenote rules
Almost every cenote charges an entrance fee, in cash, and almost every one will ask you to shower before you get in. Sunscreen, insect repellent and cosmetics all poison a closed body of water that drains into the same aquifer the town drinks from, so either skip them or use something certified biodegradable and rinse it off first.
Bring your own towel and water, wear shoes you can walk wet limestone in, and expect the water to be cold: it sits around twenty-four degrees all year, which feels arctic after the Caribbean. Life jackets are compulsory at some sites and included in the ticket.
Seaweed
Sargassum is the thing nobody mentions in the photographs. Great rafts of brown seaweed drift onto this coast, worst roughly from April to August, and in a bad week the beach is a metre-deep bank of it that smells of sulphur as it rots. Hotels rake their own frontage; public beaches get what they get.
It is unpredictable year to year and there is no arguing with it. If the sea is the whole reason you are coming, travel between November and March, and if you are here in the summer, the cenotes are the answer and they are not affected at all.
Money and heat
Carry cash. Cenotes, colectivos, the small restaurants and most beach entrances are cash only, and the exchange rate offered by card terminals that ask whether you would like to pay in dollars is always worse than the one your bank gives you.
The heat is the other constraint. Anything involving walking around in the open, which means both sets of ruins, should be done before eleven. Afternoons are for water and shade.
The thing people remember about Tulum is not the beach, which has a great deal of competition in this hemisphere, and not really the ruins either, though they are the photograph. It is dropping through a hole in the ground into water so clear the bottom looks close enough to touch, in a cave with tree roots hanging into it, twenty minutes after eating tacos at a roadside stand.
Go early, carry cash, and leave one afternoon with nothing in it.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is three days enough for Tulum?
- For the ruins, a couple of cenotes and Coba, yes. Tulum is a place people extend rather than rush, but the sights themselves are a day and a half of actual visiting; the rest of any longer stay is beach and water, which you can have as much or as little of as you like.
- Pueblo or beach road?
- The pueblo, for almost everyone. It is where the transport, the cash machines and the affordable food are, and taxis and bicycles reach the sand in minutes. The beach road is genuinely lovely and genuinely expensive, and a lot of it runs on generators and does not take cards.
- Do I need a car?
- No. Colectivos run along the highway and the Coba road all day for a few pesos and stop wherever you flag them, and organised half-day trips to Coba are easy to book. A car earns its keep only if you want three cenotes in a day.
- When is the seaweed worst?
- Roughly April to August, and it varies enormously from week to week and year to year. November to March is the safest stretch for clear water. The cenotes are unaffected in any season, which is one more reason to plan around them.
- Tulum or Chichen Itza?
- They are different things. Chichen Itza is the great restored ceremonial centre and it is two and a half hours away, so it takes a full day from here. Tulum is small and late and its whole claim is the setting. Coba, in this plan, is the better use of an inland day: bigger, wilder and far less crowded.
- Can I change it?
- Yes. Open it in your account and it becomes an ordinary trip you can edit: swap Coba for Chichen Itza, add a night on the beach road, or move the ruins to a different morning.