Slow and Steady

Across Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, Michael Snyder finds carefully considered tourism projects that are keeping communities and ways of life intact

It was a hot, bright afternoon in the Place Where the Sky Is Born. This is one of several translations of the Maya phrase Sian Ka’an, the name for a 1,080-square-mile biosphere reserve on the Caribbean coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. A gentle current pulled me west down an ancient canal to the sea. The water was crystalline and just cool enough to be refreshing as I drifted past a centuries-old Mayan customhouse and the high white arcades of mangrove roots, convenient perches for darting purple martins, gray crowned cranes, and pink bromeliads with their spiky fronds. It was nearly silent despite the fact that Tulum, a once-sleepy town that has struggled in recent years to navigate the challenges brought on by mass tourism, sat barely 40 miles to the north.…

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Conde Nast Traveler (Digital) - 1 Issue, January/February 2021

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