Cobá: A bit more remote than Tulúm, but only 31 mi / 50 km from Tukúm, Cobá is also much larger - much of the city is unexcavated - and less developed. You can walk the trails or bicycle them, or hire a ciclo. You can still climb the pyramids here, though for years it has been said “this is the last year”. One day, it’ll be closed to that. “Mañana”.

Link to mexperience guide to Cobá.

Bus from Cancún, Tulúm and Playa del Carmen to Cobá daily. Great to combine Cobá in the morning, lunch, swim in a cenotes back to Tulúm to cool off, end at Tukúm and a beach swim nearby if you have a car.

There are restaurants, there’s a decent hotel with a restaurant, and a nearby small lake where sightings or Morelet’s Crocodiles are pretty reliable. En route there are cenotes, limestone sinks in the forest, where you can cool off, snorkel and see curious endemic critters like blind cave characin fish. Some were sacred sites to the Maya.