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Cancun:
A Luxury Resort Engulfed in Tourist Attributes
by Habeeb Salloum
Recommended for couples
looking for beach honeymoons, getaways
We have the most perfect
resort in the world. It's the only spot on earth which was picked by computer
for development as a tourist centre. Our Cancún guide Manual
glowed with pride, then continued with a bit of information that he must
have passed on to thousands of other tourists: You know that when
Mexico in 1960 was searching for a spot to build a new resort, data on
all possible sites were fed into a computer and it was discovered that
Cancún was the perfect location - a place where many honeymooners
travel to spend their days of bliss.
Obviously, Manual had a point. The ensuing years were to confirm that
the computer had made an exemplary decision. In a few decades, after work
began in the early 1970s, Cancún, located in the state of Quintana
Roo, became Mexico's most famous holiday mecca. Today, it is Mexicos
most glamorous Caribbean resort which lures annually some 1,500,000 visitors,
including a fair number of newly-weds. It has become, as it was in the
days of the Mayan kings, a playground for the lovers and affluent.
Situated in the heart of the Maya world, Cancún, or Golden
Snake in the Mayan dialect, offers luxury accommodation and very
modern tourist facilities, a gentle climate, averaging about 27 C (80
F), and magnificent blue water lapping cool talcum-white sand. There are
very few other places in the world where sky, sea and sand blend together
so perfectly.
Its many natural and modern tourist attributes, along with the nearby
vast world of breathtaking Mayan ruins, make it a perfect holiday destination.
Here, a honeymooner or any traveller can savour the best of what the 21st
century has to offer and, if inclined, visit unspoiled nature and the
ruins of the ultimate civilization developed in pre-Columbus America.
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The resort is divided into
two sections: Cancún City, - a boom town appearing to have been
erected overnight; and the elegant hotel-studded island - the luxurious
section called Zona Hotelera, once an uninhabited sandbar edging the verdant
Yucatán jungle. Today, the well-paved Kukulkán Boulevard
connects the 22 km (14 mi) long and near 1/2 km wide elbow-shaped island
from end to end. The Zona is covered with more than 120 fine hotels, many
all-inclusive, and condos with 26,000 rooms. All the hotels are beautifully
designed and set in lavish layouts. With the sea on one side and the jungle-backed
lagoon on the other, every one of their rooms looks out onto the water.
In between, sumptuous restaurants, ultra modern shopping plazas and the
largest Convention Centre in the Caribbean, crowd the Zona. Oozing in
luxury, these striking structures with their atriums, pyramids, towers
and turrets appear to be more at home in the Arabian Nights. They are
edged by the delightful Cancún beaches with their finely-grained
delicate white sands, always cool to the touch. Seeing me enjoying the
sand's fine texture, a passing lifeguard warned me Beware! The white
sands act as a natural reflector. You can easily sunburn.
A tourist
must take care when lazing on the beaches - some kind of sun protection
is essential. Also, the riptides and undertow are dangerous and unless
one is a strong swimmer, the pool is the place to idle away the time.
Another major drawback to Cancúns beaches are their location
in the Caribbean hurricane zone. It is not the best place to be during
a major storm. In l988, the fierce Hurricane Gilbert took away most of
the sands from a number of beaches.
>>continued
on page 2 Dining, Nightlife, Resources
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