Posada Luna del Sur
A small guesthouse on a side street a few blocks off the main avenue, run by people who answer questions properly. Breakfast in a courtyard and bicycles at the door.
Tulum.
A Maya port on a cliff, a beach road under the palms, and 100 miles of flooded cave under the jungle behind it. Sleep here and a pyramid, a lagoon and a turtle bay are all inside a day.
- Best Months
- Nov to Apr
- Average Temp.
- 86°F (30°C)
- Sea Temp.
- 82°F (28°C)
Beaches, pyramids, cenotes.
What the days here are made of, and how far one road gets you. The light on the cliff at 7, the cold shock of the first cenote, and a highway that puts a pyramid, a lagoon and a bay full of turtles inside a single day.
The coast here is a shelf of limestone with a skin of sand on it and nothing underneath but water. That single fact explains the whole place. No rivers, no hills, no ground you can dig a foundation into without hitting a cave.
Tulum is two settlements sharing a name. The town sits on Highway 307 where the buses stop, running on tacos, laundries and dive shops. The beach road runs along the sand 2 miles east, on generators and imported everything. People argue about which one counts. Book either, because the 15 minutes between them matter far less than the road they both sit on.
That road is the point. Akumal and its turtles are 25 minutes north, Coba is 45 minutes into the forest, Chichen Itza is 2 hours inland and Bacalar is 3 hours south. What does not move is the water: cenotes at 77°F (25°C) all year, cold enough on the first drop to make you swear, and a sea that some years arrives brown with sargassum and smells like low tide.
Give it 5 nights. One goes to the walled site at opening time, one to a cenote nobody has heard of, one to the pyramid 2 hours inland, and the last 2 to the sand, because by then you will want them. Plenty of people book Tulum for the sand and go home talking about a day they spent somewhere else.
Top picks
The Castillo before the coaches land
Chichen Itza, 2 hours inland. Get there for opening.The walled site before the heat
North end of the beach road. Opens at 8, a queue by 10.Floating the Muyil canal
Sian Ka'an, where the beach road ends. The current does it.Turtles in the seagrass at Akumal
Guided, capped, and worth the rules.A cenote on a weekday
Water sits at 77°F (25°C) all year. Sunscreen off first.Bacalar on a bright day
3 hours south. The color needs the sun.Cochinita tacos before they run out
The good places are done by early afternoon.
The weather is the easy part.
Hot all year, wet from May, and the thing that actually decides your trip is not the rain. It is what the sea brings in.
The dry half
November to April
Cooler nights, clear water.
March is the driest month on the record at 1.2in (30mm), and the whole stretch from November to April sits under three inches a month. Nights drop into the low seventies, which is the only time of year you sleep without air conditioning. It is also when the sargassum is usually gone, which is why everyone comes.
- Highs
- 82 to 86°F (28 to 30°C)
- Nights
- 66 to 72°F (19 to 22°C)
- Sea
- 79 to 82°F (26 to 28°C)
- Rain
- Short and rare
The wet half
May to October
Warmer, wetter, and half the price.
Rain arrives in the afternoon and is usually done inside an hour, so the mornings still work. September and October are the wettest months at around 6.3in (160mm) and 7.1in (180mm) and they sit in hurricane season. In exchange the rooms fall to their lowest rates of the year and the cenotes are empty on a weekday.
- Highs
- 88 to 91°F (31 to 33°C)
- Humidity
- 80%+
- Seaweed
- Jun to Aug worst
- Rates
- Down 30 to 50%
Average rainfall at Tulum, inches / mm per month
2.6"65mm
Jan
1.8"45mm
Feb
1.2"30mm
Mar
1.6"40mm
Apr
4.1"105mm
May
5.9"150mm
Jun
4.3"110mm
Jul
3.7"95mm
Aug
6.3"160mm
Sep
7.1"180mm
Oct
3.3"85mm
Nov
2.2"55mm
Dec
Best time to go. November and April, the two ends of the dry season. The middle of it, December through March, is drier still and carries the Christmas fortnight and the spring break crowd with it. May to October is hotter, wetter and the cheapest the year gets, and June to August is when the seaweed is at its worst.
Off season Peak season Best time to go
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The days people book first.
Tulum is a good town and a better base. One highway runs through it, and a morning on that road puts you at a pyramid, a lagoon they named for its 7 colors, or a bay where turtles graze in waist-deep water. Here they are in the order people book them, which is not the order of a map.
5 nights gets you the pyramid, the lagoon and a morning with turtles. Everything else is what you do between them.
How to get to Tulum.
Almost everybody lands at Cancun and drives an hour and a half south. Since the end of 2023 there is a second door, and whether you use it decides how the first day of a trip goes.
Step one
Fly to Tulum TQO or CUN
Tulum has had its own airport since the end of 2023. Felipe Carrillo Puerto sits 16 miles (25 km) from town and takes a short but growing list of direct routes. Cancun is 75 miles (120 km) north, second busiest in Mexico, and still catches almost everything flying to this coast, which is why most people land there anyway. Check both fares. If Tulum comes within about $80 of Cancun, take Tulum and skip the drive.
Step two
Cancun CUN → Tulum
Only if you landed at Cancun. 75 miles (120 km) of straight, fast highway down the coast, and what you pay for it runs from about $6 on a colectivo to about $160 in a private van. The difference is mostly patience. Out of Tulum's own airport it is a 40 minute run into town instead.
Option A · The bus
ADO from the terminal ADO
Runs from every Cancun terminal, air conditioned, luggage underneath. You buy the ticket at the counter and get on.
about2 hr 30down the highway
Option B · A car and a driver
Private transfer VAN
Booked ahead, meets you with a sign, drops you at the door. The only option that works with three bags and a car seat.
about1 hr 30door to door0 minwaiting for it
What we'd do
Landing in daylight, travelling light? Take the ADO. It is under thirty dollars, it is comfortable, and it puts you in the middle of town. Landing late, or three of you with bags? Book a private van before you fly and be at your door in ninety minutes. And check Tulum's own airport on the way in and on the way out. It is often the same money and it is always two hours less of your life.
Where to stay.
Pick the side of the highway first, because that decides the price, the food and how often you are in a taxi. The room is the easy part.
Where you'll base
5 areasAreas (1/5)
Tulum Pueblo
The town grid
Either side of Avenida Tulum, where the bus station is and where people who live here live. Small hotels above shops, hostels with courtyards, and the cheapest beds in the whole place. Twelve minutes to the sand on a bicycle.
The beach · 12 min by bicycle, 10 by taxi
No beach attached and no pretence of one. What you get instead is a cash machine inside an actual bank, which the coast does not have.
Our shortcut
First trip, stay and rent bicycles; second trip, take three nights on the sand and pay for the pool.
Stays
5 in Tulum PuebloPlaces (1/2)
Hotel Marites
Plain rooms around a courtyard, two minutes from the bus station and about five from the best cochinita in town. The kind of place that makes the town argument for itself.
Maison Tulum
A small hotel with a pool in the middle of the grid, close enough to walk to everything on Avenida Tulum and set back enough to sleep through it.
Casa Rosa
Pink, small and central, a couple of streets off the avenue. Rooms are basic and the location is the whole point.
Teetotum
On the road out toward Aldea Zama, with a pool and a kitchen that locals eat in. Slightly out of the grid, which cuts the street noise down.
Everything worth doing.
Half of it is in fresh water you cannot see from the road. The other half is a wall on a cliff, a forest full of stone, and a bicycle.
Under the jungle
Stone, and the forest around it
Slower, and mostly free
Days away from the sand.
Nothing here runs on a fixed circuit. What you buy is a morning or a day at a time, sold out of the town, off the beach road, or straight at the gate: a string of cenotes, a cave line for divers, a float through the mangrove, a bay full of turtles, a city in the forest, and, if you are willing to start before 6, the big pyramid 2 hours inland, a boat out of the city up north, or a lagoon 3 hours south that runs through 5 shades of blue. Pick one and follow it from the first stop to the last swim.
Three holes in the same river
4 stops·Morning, about 4 hr·Bicycle, colectivo or a rented car·All year
Three cenotes in one morning, in the order that puts the cold one first.
Stop 1 of 4
Casa Tortuga, the covered one
Down the rock steps in a life jacket, into water that runs back under the overhang.
You go in as a group, because a guide is the only way they let you do it. The stair down is rock and the water at the bottom is shallow enough to stand in, 77°F (25°C) like all of them and colder than that number sounds. A little way in the roof comes over and the pool keeps going back under the limestone, dark, with nobody swimming out that far. Somebody always films the first person to get in.
8 AM· north out of town on the highwayMidday· back before the heat
Before you leave the water
You have seen what the days look like. Now pick the base you want to run them from.
What and where to eat.
You will find the Mexican food you came for. Tacos al pastor off a spit at night, quesadillas, enchiladas, churros from a cart. Behind it sits the Yucatecan half of the menu, which is pork, achiote, sour orange and pickled onion and tastes like nowhere else in the country. Both are cheap in town and roughly triple on the beach road, and the best of the local cooking is gone by two in the afternoon.
What to order
16 dishesStart where everyone starts, with tacos al pastor from a spit on the avenue after dark. Then order cochinita pibil, pork buried in banana leaf overnight with achiote and sour orange. It arrives on a panucho at breakfast and in a taco at nine in the morning, and the good places have sold out by early afternoon.
Look for the pink pickled onion. It is on everything here, it is habanero and sour orange, and it is the flavor people go home trying to reproduce.
Then work outward: chilaquiles before noon, poc chuc at lunch, tikin xic if there is a grill going, and churros or an elote from a cart afterwards.
Go early.
Dishes (1/16)
Tacos al pastor
The one everybody already knows.
Pork shaved off a spit that has been turning all evening, dropped on a small corn tortilla with pineapple, raw onion and cilantro. Order four, eat them standing, order four more.
Cochinita pibil
The one to eat first.
Pork marinated in achiote and sour orange, wrapped in banana leaf and cooked overnight in a pit. Shredded, wet, and served with pickled red onion.
Tacos de pescado
What the coast does with a taco.
Fish either battered and fried or grilled, in a corn tortilla with cabbage, crema and pickled onion. Half the price in town, and usually better there too.
Quesadillas
The safe order, done properly.
A tortilla folded over melted cheese and griddled until the edge browns. Ask for it with mushrooms, chicharron or squash blossom and it stops being the kids menu.
Guacamole
Mashed at the table when you are lucky.
Avocado worked in a stone molcajete with lime, onion, cilantro and chili, with warm totopos to push it around. On the beach road it costs more than a whole lunch in town.
Chilaquiles
Breakfast that repairs the night before.
Tortilla chips simmered in red or green salsa until they go soft, then buried under crema, queso fresco, onion and a fried egg. Every cafe in the grid serves it until noon.
Enchiladas
Green ones, nine times out of ten.
Rolled tortillas filled with chicken or cheese, under salsa verde, crema and pickled onion. The dish you already know, made with tortillas pressed that morning.
Elote
Cart food, two dollars, no plate.
Corn grilled over coals then rolled in mayo, crumbled cheese, lime and chili powder. Ask for esquites instead and you get the same thing cut into a cup with a spoon.
Panuchos
Breakfast, standing up.
A fried tortilla split and stuffed with black bean paste, then topped with cochinita or turkey, lettuce, tomato and pickled onion.
Salbutes
The soft one.
The same idea with no bean inside, so the tortilla puffs and stays soft instead of going crisp. Turkey, avocado, pickled onion.
Poc chuc
Sour orange and charcoal.
Thin pork steaks marinated in sour orange and grilled hard, served with black beans, pickled onion and a tomato salsa. The name is Maya for toast and charcoal.
Tikin xic
Whole fish, red all over.
Fish split flat, rubbed with achiote paste and sour orange, wrapped in banana leaf and cooked over wood. The coastal cousin of cochinita.
Tostadas
Three bites, then it collapses.
A whole tortilla fried flat and loaded with ceviche, shrimp or cochinita, plus avocado and salsa. Eat it held over the plate, because the second bite breaks it.
Tamales
Banana leaf here, not corn husk.
Corn dough steamed around pork or chicken with a red or green sauce worked through it. The Yucatan version comes out flatter and heavier than the ones further west.
Papadzules
Green, and much older than it looks.
Tortillas rolled around hard-boiled egg under a pumpkin seed sauce, with a red tomato sauce over the top. Pre-Hispanic, and still on every Yucatecan menu.
Churros
The one you eat walking home.
Ridged fried dough rolled in cinnamon sugar with a cup of chocolate thick enough to stand a spoon in. The carts come out once the heat drops.
Where to eat it
5 areasPick where you are, then swipe through what is open there.
Areas (1/5)
Tulum Pueblo
The town grid
Where the food is. Cochinita griddles that open at seven, taco stands that go past midnight, and a bill that will not make sense after a week on the coast.
How we'd eat
Cochinita from a griddle before nine, tacos de pescado at two, and one dinner on the beach road that you booked a week ago.
Taqueria Honorio
YucatecanTacosBreakfastA griddle under an awning on Satelite Sur doing cochinita and lechon from early morning. The queue is locals and the good stuff is gone by early afternoon. Hours are not posted anywhere, and it does not need them.
Antojitos La Chiapaneca
TacosMexicanLateThe al pastor spit on Avenida Tulum, spinning from the evening until very late. Panuchos, salbutes and tacos at prices that look like a misprint after a day on the beach road.
El Camello Jr
SeafoodCevicheMexicanA big open room at the north end of the avenue doing ceviche, whole fish and seafood cocktails to a room that is half visitors and half families. Cash is easiest.
Burrito Amor
MexicanBreakfastHealthyBurritos wrapped in banana leaf instead of foil, plus juices and coffee, in a garden off the avenue. Reliable, and the one everybody in town has eaten at least once.
Charlie's
MexicanSeafoodInternationalA garden courtyard on the avenue running from half past seven in the morning to half past eleven at night, which covers almost any hour you turn up hungry.
La Barracuda
SeafoodMexicanSeafood on the avenue with plastic chairs, cold beer and a fish of the day. Nothing about it is styled and that is most of the appeal.
Del Cielo
CafeBreakfastBakeryA morning place on Satelite Sur, open eight until one and then done for the day. Coffee, pastries and eggs, and it fills with people on laptops by nine.
Loncheria Leo
YucatecanQuick BitesA counter doing the local canon from half past seven in the morning to half past ten at night, seven days. Cheap, plain, and open when everything with a concept is not.
La Guarida
MexicanBarGrillOpen from nine in the morning until midnight in the middle of the grid. The kind of room that works for a late lunch and again for a last drink.
Mistico Tulum
BarMexicanLateRuns from nine in the morning to two in the morning, which is the longest posted day in town. Mezcal, food, and a room that changes character three times before it closes.
Rossina Cafe
CafeBreakfastSandwichCoffee from half past seven, and it stays open into the evening Thursday through Sunday and shuts at half past two the rest of the week. Read the day before you plan around it.
El Asadero
GrillMexicanSteakA charcoal grill on the north side of the grid, four in the afternoon until eleven, closed Sundays. Meat, and a room that smells like it from the street.
Batey Mojito & Guarapo Bar
BarCocktailsThe one with the painted VW out front pressing sugar cane into the mojitos. Live music most nights and the whole street standing outside it by eleven.
How to get around.
There is no ride-hailing app here and the taxi fares are fixed high, which is the single most reliable way to spend more than you planned. Almost everything else is cheap.
On Foot
The town gridWalking
The whole of Tulum Pueblo crosses in twenty minutes. Pavements come and go.
Bicycle
Town to the beachUnhurried
Twelve minutes to the sand on the cycle path. Lights matter after dark.
Colectivo
Up and down the highwayCheap and constant
White vans on 307. Flag one down, pay the man at the door in cash.
ADO Bus
The airports and the coastScheduled
From the station on Avenida Tulum. Air conditioned, seats booked.
Scooter
Cenote huntingQuick
Helmets are the law. Sand on the corners of the beach road.
Taxi
Town to the beach roadFastest
No meters, no app. Agree the fare through the window before you open the door.
| Mode | For | Speed | Good to know | Fare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
On Foot | The town grid | Walking | The whole of Tulum Pueblo crosses in twenty minutes. Pavements come and go. | |
Bicycle | Town to the beach | Unhurried | Twelve minutes to the sand on the cycle path. Lights matter after dark. | |
Colectivo | Up and down the highway | Cheap and constant | White vans on 307. Flag one down, pay the man at the door in cash. | |
ADO Bus | The airports and the coast | Scheduled | From the station on Avenida Tulum. Air conditioned, seats booked. | |
Scooter | Cenote hunting | Quick | Helmets are the law. Sand on the corners of the beach road. | |
Taxi | Town to the beach road | Fastest | No meters, no app. Agree the fare through the window before you open the door. |
Teach a friend some Spanish
Useful Spanish phrases.
English gets you through the beach road and most of the town, and that is exactly the problem: it is possible to spend a week here and speak none. Four minutes of this changes what the taco stand is like.
0/16 learned
means
Must knows.
Ten things worth sorting before you go. Most of them cost nothing and two of them will save you a great deal of money.
Tips by category
5 categoriesCategories (1/5)
Before you ask.
The airport, the taxis, the seaweed, the water you can and cannot drink. Step through the topics, the marker follows you down.
Topics
Still curious? Just email us
Getting There
Whichever costs less, within about eighty dollars. Tulum's own airport, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, opened at the end of 2023 and sits 16 miles south of town, so it saves you the ninety-minute drive from Cancun at both ends. Cancun has far more routes and far more competition on price, which is why most people still land there.
Still curious? Just email us