Puerto Morelos

I came through on a combi from Cancún airport and almost missed the stop — there is no billboard, no inflatable parrot, nothing to announce that you have arrived somewhere worth staying. The highway drops you at a junction and a five-minute taxi ride brings you to the zócalo, where a few tables from Punta Corcho spill onto the pavement and someone is always nursing a michelada at an hour that raises no eyebrows here. The lighthouse stands at a confident lean across the square. A structural correction could have been commissioned at some point in the last sixty years. Instead the town kept it exactly as Hurricane Beulah left it in 1967, and I think that tells you most of what you need to know about Puerto Morelos.

A Reef That Still Works

The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef runs the length of this coastline, but most of it has been traded away — jet-ski anchors, parasailing ropes, the industrial sunscreen volume of resort towns — for the tourism economy to the north and south. Puerto Morelos falls inside a federally protected national park zone, which means the rules are enforced: no motorized water sports over the reef, dive boats moor to designated buoys, and the coral gets to be coral. I went out with Dive In Puerto Morelos on a two-tank morning; visibility ran around twenty-five metres and we drifted over brain corals the size of armchairs. My guide Luis pointed out a hawksbill turtle working through the sea fans with the calm authority of something that has concluded this reef belongs to it — which is essentially correct. The shallower section near La Boca beach is accessible to snorkellers without a guide, but a dive lets you reach the wall where the seafloor drops away and the bigger fish hold in the cooler water below. The contrast with what passes for reef diving in Cancún or Playa del Carmen is not subtle.

Sunday Evening on the Square

Sunday evening the zócalo fills in the way I have not seen work outside Mexico: families on every bench, a football match on the concrete pitch at the north end, vendors moving through the crowd with elotes and agua de Jamaica, the whole thing happening with no event organizer or social media strategy behind it. I ate a plate of pescado al ajillo from one of the informal food stands that appear along the square’s edge around six o’clock — garlic, white fish, more butter than was strictly necessary, a stack of hand-pressed tortillas on the side — and watched a boy of about eight execute a free kick with a seriousness wholly disproportionate to the audience. The Mercado on Avenida Javier Rojo Gómez runs Wednesday and Saturday mornings with local produce and occasional fresh catch from the cooperativa boats; the cooperative dock sits at the north end of the beach and the fishermen come in early.

Where to Eat and Stay

The town is compact enough that location barely matters. Posada Amor on Rojo Gómez has been receiving travellers long enough to earn the right to be unremarkable-looking; the rooms are clean and breakfast is included and generous. For dinner, Al Chimichurri handles grilled fish well, and Jungle Place — set back from the square — makes a ceviche tostada that I ordered twice on the same evening without shame. The pace in Puerto Morelos being what it is, most meals run long without effort.

Getting There

Puerto Morelos sits on Highway 307, roughly 36 kilometres south of Cancún airport and 30 kilometres north of Playa del Carmen. Combis run the highway frequently from both directions — flag one down at the Puerto Morelos junction signs on the federal road. The taxi from the junction to the zócalo costs around 50 pesos. The drive from the airport by taxi or rental car is under thirty minutes in light traffic.