Getting around Tulum

Tulum is three places pretending to be one. There is the town, Tulum Centro, where people actually live. There is Aldea Zama and La Veleta, the newer residential strips where most rentals sit. And there is the beach road, a single ten-kilometre lane of hotels and clubs between the jungle and the sea. How you get around depends entirely on which of the three you are standing in.

Inside Aldea Zama you walk or cycle, and that works. Between the town and the beach road you need wheels of some kind, because it is four to six kilometres through heat with no shade and no pavement for much of it. For the cenotes and ruins outside town you want a car, a colectivo, or a driver.

Two things are worth knowing before you arrive. Taxis have no meters: the price is agreed before you get in, and it is routinely quoted higher to visitors, so knowing the going rate for your route is worth more than any haggling technique. And colectivos, the white shared vans running Highway 307, are the cheapest and most reliable way to move along the coast, but they stop where locals stop rather than where hotels are.

On arrival, Tulum airport sits about 20 kilometres south of the town, roughly 30 to 35 minutes by road, with an ADO bus running a limited daily schedule alongside the usual private transfers. Cancun has far more flights but puts you 1.5 to 3 hours away depending on traffic. Neither is wrong; the trade is flight choice against transfer time.