Tulum beaches, honestly

Tulum’s beach is one long stretch of white sand backed by a single road, and the thing nobody tells you is how little of it is straightforwardly public. Most of the frontage is held by hotels and beach clubs, which means access usually comes with a minimum spend, a day-bed rate, or both. Public access points exist and they are worth finding, because the sand is the same sand.

The second thing nobody mentions is sargassum. Between roughly April and September the Caribbean brings in rafts of brown seaweed, and when it lands it changes the beach completely: the water goes murky, the smell is real, and the hotels run crews with rakes from dawn. June through August is the worst of it. November through March is when the water looks the way it does in the photographs.

That is not a reason to avoid the summer, but it is a reason to plan around it. On a heavy sargassum week the cenotes and the lagoon are better swimming than the sea, and anyone who has booked a beach holiday without that in their back pocket ends up disappointed.

The pages below cover the individual beaches and clubs, where you can get in without a reservation, and what the seaweed is actually doing right now rather than what it did last year.