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The spring holiday travel season is just weeks away in the Mexican Caribbean.
That will drive thousands of visitors to Cancun and other popular beach destinations to enjoy all of the sun, sand and surf the region has to offer guests.
A number of visitors will also head to experience some of the amazing cultural experiences in the Yucatan, including some of the most popular Maya archaeological sites in the entire country.
However, they might find the road a rough go to venture to explore the history of the Maya ruin sites.
Rough Road Ahead
Raúl Andrade, president of one of the hotel associations in Quintana Roo, said in a news report on the topic that his member hotels have been receiving a number of complaints from tourists in the Mexican Caribbean about the state of the rural roadways to the many Maya history sites across the region.
He believes that the roadways in the area are actually falling into disrepair due to the construction efforts of the Maya Train project across the Yucatan.
“People are interested in coming to the southern area, and we are confident that once the Mayan Train is completed, the affected roads will be repaired to improve tourist influx,” Andrade said in a recent news report.
Until then, tourists will be out of luck and will either have to struggle on rural roadways between Cancun and Merida or opt to take the Maya Train, which is facing challenges on its own.
Moving Forward
While many travelers may opt to take the Maya Train to visit the popular archaeological sites and bypass road travel altogether, that is not an option for all travelers.
The Maya Train is not functional yet in many areas of the Mexican Caribbean. Also, the reliability of the network is not up to where it should be yet.
That leads many visitors to the roads to check out the popular sites. In fact, it is truly many visitors.
Last month, Chichen Itza hit a new one-day record for visitors to the site, partly attributed to the Maya Train program.
Riviera Maya Hotel Association President Toni Chaves plans to join with Adrade to meet with federal officials to get the issues with the area highways resolved.
Chaves is mainly concerned with the road conditions of Mexico Federal Highway 307, which does not impact Maya sites but, more critically, runs from Cancun to Chetumal in Quintana Roo and connects much of the prime tourist destinations in the Mexican Caribbean, including Tulum and Playa del Carmen.
They are hopeful that the improvement process for tourists can be started before the start of the peak spring holiday travel season.
Advice for Travelers
Until repairs can be made on the roads, travelers driving or taking tour bus transportation may find a rough ride on some of the local roads in the south part of Quintana Roo and on the way to and from many of the popular archaeological sites in the Yucatan.
Hopefully some repairs can be made to the roadway which has been chewed up in places due to the heavy trucks building the Maya Train project and general disrepair.
However, with the approach of tropical weather season quickly approaching, it may only be a matter of time before the roads are in poor condition again.
That will especially be the case in the more rural parts of the Mexican Caribbean.
As the Maya Train gets built out, travelers may just opt out of driving and bus service and ride the rails instead.
Conspiracy theorists may actually believe that was the original intent behind the deteriorating local highways.
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