How are the roads in Yucatan: Riviera Maya, Playa del Carmen, Cancun, Merida, etc? Do I need a four-wheel drive in Yucatan: Riviera Maya, Playa del Carmen, Cancun, Merida, etc?
Wade Yarchan - Yucatan Beach Homes
If you live in Merida, you can get by with a small car that will never be off road. Other people at the beach in Yucatan have SUVs. I have an SUV that we are going to replace with another SUV or a four-wheel drive just because all the beaches have unpaved roads. They are sand roads, just like Cancun was in 1975. You can get by with a car here and never go off road. Most people here in Yucatan don’t have SUVs. It is just my personal preference. The roads in...
If you live in Merida, you can get by with a small car that will never be off road. Other people at the beach in Yucatan have SUVs. I have an SUV that we are going to replace with another SUV or a four-wheel drive just because all the beaches have unpaved roads. They are sand roads, just like Cancun was in 1975. You can get by with a car here and never go off road. Most people here in Yucatan don’t have SUVs. It is just my personal preference. The roads in Yucatan in general are extremely good. I have spent a great deal of time in Costa Rica in the middle of the 1990s when you had to fly over the potholes so you could have some place to land. You won’t see that kind of road here in Yucatan. The roads in general are very well maintained and all the main roads are extremely well maintained.
(Paseo del Montejo, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, pictured.)
Posted October 23, 2015
Doug Willey - Doug Willey, Independent Real Estate Consultant
You don’t need a 4-wheel drive in Yucatan unless you plan on going to the middle of the boondocks somewhere, which I highly recommend not doing because it is tough on the car and you’re going to meet a whole lot of a different types of people out there, which could be dangerous. As far as around the normal expat areas of the Yucatan Peninsula, the roads are not a problem. As an example, from Chelem to Dzilam de Bravo (in the state of...
You don’t need a 4-wheel drive in Yucatan unless you plan on going to the middle of the boondocks somewhere, which I highly recommend not doing because it is tough on the car and you’re going to meet a whole lot of a different types of people out there, which could be dangerous. As far as around the normal expat areas of the Yucatan Peninsula, the roads are not a problem. As an example, from Chelem to Dzilam de Bravo (in the state of Yucatan) is an hour and 15-minute drive but it’s all along the coast. It’s all beach road all the way with beautiful scenery, pink flamingos, storks, herons, and pelicans. They are improving the road as I write this. There is one section of road before Dzilam de Bravo (an isolated are with very, very few expats), which a year and a half ago was just a one-lane road so if you met someone coming from the opposite direction, one of you had to pull over to the side and let the other one go by. I just went down that road recently and saw that they are turning it into a gigantic four-lane road going all the way through.
Dzilam de Bravo has a very small amount of expats; it’s almost entirely Mexican. It can almost be considered the boondocks but yet it’s safe and we have a road. The only thing that we are missing in Dzilam de Bravo are large grocery stores in the general area. I have to drive about an hour and a half to get to a major grocery store or shopping mall. Other than that, the roads are good going to there, I have the Internet, which is not top of the line, but I do have Internet connection.
(Monument in Merida to Francisco de Montejo y Álvarez, the elder and the younger, Spanish explorers and conquistadors of Yucatan, Mexico, pictured.)
Posted December 28, 2015
Paulina Almeida - Tao Real Estate
The roads in the Yucatán are good so there is no need for a four-wheel drive. The highways are amazing to drive on. For example, if you drive from the state of Yucatán to Quintana Roo, the highway is good and secure. The government backs you up in case of emergencies. One of the advantages of Yucatán is there are no mountain roads because there are no mountains. The roads are straight. The main road connecting all of Riviera Maya all the...
The roads in the Yucatán are good so there is no need for a four-wheel drive. The highways are amazing to drive on. For example, if you drive from the state of Yucatán to Quintana Roo, the highway is good and secure. The government backs you up in case of emergencies. One of the advantages of Yucatán is there are no mountain roads because there are no mountains. The roads are straight. The main road connecting all of Riviera Maya all the way from Cancun down to Tulum is a federal highway with two lanes on each side. It’s a straight up road with a maximum speed of 100km/h, but people drive on an average of 80-110km/h.
This is risky because the federal road is a straight road, so you have to really be careful with the cars that are turning around, and because you are actually speeding and driving really fast.
There are things on the straight roads called a “retorno” which is where you turn around, and typically, they’re on the left side, and you have a limited amount of time to stop because you have to come to a full stop before you could go to the other side. Sometimes, if there are a lot of cars or a big bus there, they may even stick out a little bit into the traveling lane so you must be aware.
(Road to Cancun, Mexico, pictured.)
Posted March 20, 2017