Cancun is also a small town, with government offices, a supermarket, pocket parks, modest hotels, an avenue lined with restaurants and clubs that you walk to and from... and funky flea markets. The choice is yours.
If you pick the 10-mile stretch of Cancun's hotel-lined beachfront for your vacation, you can select among 20,000 rooms, up from 2,000 before hurricane Gilbert hit in 1982. That natural disaster was a wake-up call to hoteliers. Restoring the beach and building bigger and better hotels continues today.
Cancun's Zona Hotelera is a stretch of bumper to bumper hotels that form a figure seven, along a road which heads north from the airport then takes a dog leg to the west. Online reservations are possible.
For medium priced lodging, I suggest the Melia Turquesa, an 11-story, pyramid-shaped hotel midway in the strip. The breakfast buffet should last you all day (about $10USD), or you can grab more modest fare at the food court in the Plaza Flamingo shopping center, a few blocks north. For reservations from the U.S. and Canada, 1-800-33-Melia.
If you get bored with lounging poolside, splashing in the salty surf, or joining in hostess-led activites, you can hop a bus to the "other" Cancun. Not exactly a sleepy Mexican village, homes and office buildings in old Cancun are a block west of Tulum Avenue, the divided thoroughfare that connects to the glitzy beach resorts. Along Tulum Avenue, you'll find modest, but nice, lodging, such as Hotel Novatel, Avenida Tulum No. 75, Tel. (98) 84-29-99. About $30 USD gets you a double room in this hotel with restaurant and pool.
The one-mile stretch of Tulum Avenue is made for walking. Restaurants have sidewalk patios where you can eat and drink and watch passersby. Two flea markets are stuffed with booths overflowing with clothes, souvenirs, jewelry, accessories, trinkets, blankets, hammocks. Here, the hawkers ARE the show.
My favorite Cancunphile, Erik Staley, recounts his vacation in Cancun in a remarkable style that balances the positive and negatives of this Caribbean beach resort. Erik promises a follow-up tale, and a homepage full of links - still under construction.
To get opinions and recommendations from other travelers, log onto an active message board where Cancun devotees and wannabes discuss the mix of surf, sand, sex, sun and sips that Cancun is made of.
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