Puerto Morelos Centro

Overview

Puerto Morelos sits roughly midway between Cancún and Playa del Carmen, about 39 kilometres south of one and 35 north of the other, and it has stayed a fishing town while both of its neighbours became something else. Life centres on the main square, the pier and the beach immediately beside them, and the pace is noticeably slower than anywhere else on this stretch of coast.

The landmark is the leaning lighthouse at the end of the beach, a concrete tower tilted by Hurricane Beulah in 1967 and left standing at its angle ever since. It stands beside its upright replacement, and the pair have become the town's emblem.

What defines the water here is the reef. The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef runs about 500 metres offshore, closer to the shoreline than almost anywhere else on the Riviera Maya, and the whole stretch lies inside a protected national reef park. The result is a shallow, calm lagoon between the sand and the reef crest, which is why this is one of the most accessible places in the region to snorkel or dive from shore.

Photo summary of last month

Photographs taken early in the day are the most informative for this beach in particular. The reason is set out below.

Position relative to the Atlantic sargassum belt

Puerto Morelos faces east into the open Caribbean, directly into the path of the Yucatán Current, which carries sargassum north-west along the Quintana Roo coast from the Caribbean Sea. There is no headland or bay sheltering it, so it receives whatever the current brings, unlike the bay beaches at the northern end of Cancún.

The reef then decides what happens next, and it cuts both ways. It breaks the swell before it reaches the sand, which is what makes the lagoon so calm and so good for snorkelling. But calm water has little energy to move floating material, so weed that drifts over the reef crest tends to stay inside the lagoon and settle along the waterline rather than washing back out.

This is the same mechanism that affects Playa Bávaro in the Dominican Republic, and it is why a reef-protected beach is not automatically a clean one. The shelter that makes the water calm is the shelter that holds the sargassum.

In practice it produces a distinct daily rhythm here: weed lines are most often heaviest in the morning, and the town clears the main beach, so the same stretch can look markedly different by afternoon.

The sargassum season

The regional season runs from about May to August and peaks in June and July, when the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt is at its largest. Puerto Morelos is fully exposed to that calendar, and unlike the sheltered Cancún bay beaches it has no geographic protection from it.

From December to March the lagoon is generally clear and the snorkelling is at its best, which is also when the town is busiest. The wider seasonal picture is set out in our Riviera Maya sargassum season guide.

Swimming conditions and safety

Inside the reef the water is shallow, warm and almost waveless, which makes this one of the gentler beaches on the coast for children and weak swimmers. The bottom is a mixture of sand and seagrass, and water shoes are worth having.

The hazards are the reef itself and boat traffic. Do not stand on or touch coral, which is both prohibited inside the national park and damaging; snorkelling trips are guided for that reason. The town is a working port with a pier, so fishing boats and tour craft move through the same water.

On sargassum: fresh weed floating in the lagoon is harmless and merely unpleasant. The sulphurous smell comes from material that has decomposed on hot sand, releasing hydrogen sulphide. Because the lagoon retains weed rather than flushing it, that smell develops here more readily than on an exposed beach with real surf.

Snorkelling and the reef park

The proximity of the reef is the reason most visitors come. Boat trips to the reef take minutes rather than the half-hour or more needed from Cancún or Playa del Carmen, and because the whole area is a protected national park the operators are licensed and the number of visitors on the reef is controlled.

Conditions on the reef are usually clearer than the lagoon even on a weeded day, since the water beyond the crest is moving. If the beach itself looks poor, the snorkelling can still be excellent, which is a distinction worth making before writing off a day here.

Access and getting there

There is no dedicated public car park at the town beach. Visitors park on the streets around the main square, which is straightforward outside peak hours and difficult at midday in high season, so arriving without a car is often the easier option.

By colectivo. The shared vans that run Highway 307 between Cancún and Playa del Carmen are the cheapest and most frequent way in. They do not enter the town: you are set down at the crucero, the signposted junction on the highway, and the centre is a further two kilometres east. Taxis wait at the junction, and the fare into town is small and fixed.

By ADO bus. The intercity ADO service runs the same corridor between Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum. It is more comfortable and runs to a timetable rather than filling up before departing, though it is less frequent than the colectivos and, like them, leaves you at the highway rather than the beach.

By taxi or transfer. Cancún airport is roughly 20 to 25 minutes north, which makes Puerto Morelos a common first or last night for travellers who would rather not begin a trip in the Hotel Zone. Pre-booked transfers are the usual approach and cost considerably less than the equivalent journey to Tulum.

Once in the centre, everything is walkable. The square, the pier, the beach and the lighthouse sit within a few hundred metres of each other, which is a large part of the town's appeal.

The live camera

This beach has a live webcam, which is the fastest way to judge conditions before setting out. Given how much the beach changes between morning and afternoon here, a camera is more useful at Puerto Morelos than at most beaches. It appears alongside the photographs and the current score on our live map.

Check live conditions before you go

Conditions at Puerto Morelos can change within hours as well as days, because the reef holds weed in the lagoon and the town clears the main beach. On the live map we track it with dated photographs, a live webcam and a daily condition score, so you can see how it looks now rather than how it usually looks.