Tulum, the city the Maya called dawn

The Maya called it Zamá, dawn, and the name still holds: Tulum faces east off a low limestone cliff, and the first light of the day reaches El Castillo before anything else on this coast. It is one of the few walled Maya cities, one of the last to be built, and it was still occupied when Spanish ships passed offshore in 1518. Arrive at opening, before the coaches, and walk the compact site slowly — the Temple of the Frescoes with its surviving traces of blue and red plaster, the Temple of the Descending God with its upside-down figure over the doorway, iguanas asleep on every wall, and a small beach below the cliff you can climb down to. The rest of Tulum is really two places. The pueblo, inland along the highway, is where people live and where the bus station, the market and the cheap cochinita stands are; the new airport and the train have put it on a much faster map. The beach road runs south for ten kilometres between the sea and the lagoon, a strip of low-slung hotels and restaurants under coconut palms, much of it off the mains grid. A bicycle is the sane way to move between the two. Inland, the limestone opens: Gran Cenote and Calavera are minutes out on the Cobá road, Dos Ojos a little further, and Cobá itself is forty-five kilometres away, a forest site of raised sacbé causeways and the tall Nohoch Mul pyramid, no longer climbable but still imposing from the base. South, Sian Ka'an protects lagoon, mangrove and reef, and boats from Muyil let you drift down a canal the Maya cut through the reeds. The dry season runs November to April.