How's the hiking and camping in and around Yucatan: Riviera Maya, Playa del Carmen, Cancun, Merida, etc.?

There are no official government campgrounds in the Yucatan. There are some hotels that let you use their parking lots for RV spaces. There are no real public spaces for camping but many families and friends will go back home, to their small villages or to their ranches, and they might have an old hacienda on the grounds but they’ll do their camping there on their own property. 

 

There’s a huge culture of camping in Mexico and there are a...

There are no official government campgrounds in the Yucatan. There are some hotels that let you use their parking lots for RV spaces. There are no real public spaces for camping but many families and friends will go back home, to their small villages or to their ranches, and they might have an old hacienda on the grounds but they’ll do their camping there on their own property. 

 

There’s a huge culture of camping in Mexico and there are a lot of parks, federal and state, throughout Mexico that promote camping. It’s just that the Yucatan Peninsula hasn’t caught up with those public areas for overnight stays, offering the amenities where people can get their tent and do some overnight camping. It’s not that prevalent. Can you stay at one of the beaches here? Sure, you can stay on one of the beaches. People are starting to come down in their RVs, so that’s becoming a little more prevalent, there’s not a public space.

 

There are a lot of private ejidos (communal property owned by the village), and there are several tourist projects going on sponsored by these villages that do allow you to come, and the ejido is usually tied to a cenote (natural sinkhole for which Yucatan is famous). So they’ll allow you to rent one of their cabins or use your tent as an eco-tourism experience where you can spend the night in the tent or in an old Mayan home and during the day go diving in the cenote.

 

There are several caverns known here in Yucatan, and you can hike through these underground cavern systems.   The majority of the Yucatan Peninsula is flat. If you head toward the south you start getting some hilly areas but there’s no real mountain hiking in the peninsula. If you want to do some jungle hiking,  you can go through a jungle, including areas where you would need a machetes.  You can also follow several of the old Mayan highways that they’ve cleared.

 

(Traditional Mayan house, Cozumel, Mexico, pictured.)

There aren’t really facilities for camping in and around Yucatan. We have a piece of land by the Ruin of Uxmál so we go hiking and camping from it. It’s our own piece of property, so for us, it’s very interesting because there are Mayan ruins and indigenous plants all over the place. We can hike near our property, and we’ve been all over to lots of ruins and areas, and have certainly gone and walked to cenotes. We camp a lot on our land. 

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There aren’t really facilities for camping in and around Yucatan. We have a piece of land by the Ruin of Uxmál so we go hiking and camping from it. It’s our own piece of property, so for us, it’s very interesting because there are Mayan ruins and indigenous plants all over the place. We can hike near our property, and we’ve been all over to lots of ruins and areas, and have certainly gone and walked to cenotes. We camp a lot on our land. 

 

Most of the locals go to the beach or have a beach house, and that’s just their idea of a day out. Many people here live a camping lifestyle because they live in the country. They might live in a mud house, and to them that’s camping. Where they build a fire every night and cook their tortillas, that’s camping. That’s just their life.

 

Expats do a lot of hiking, but I don’t think they go camping. Everybody gets here, likes their bed and their air conditioning. They don’t want to be bothered by mosquitoes, and hauling water or food. Many expats have a house in Merida and a house at the beach because they like the city life and they want to see the ocean.

 

(Temple and ancient buildings at Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico, pictured.)