Day Trips & Excursions

Cancun is one of the best bases anywhere for day trips. Within a couple of hours you can reach a wonder of the world, a clifftop Maya city, an island with world-class beaches, pink lakes full of flamingos and two huge eco-parks. The hard part is choosing, so the ranking above orders them by what they actually deliver rather than by what is most heavily advertised.

A useful rule for a week in Cancun: take one big ruins day, one water day and one wildcard. Chichen Itza covers the first, an Isla Mujeres catamaran or Tulum covers the second, and Rio Lagartos or the whale sharks in season covers the third. Almost all of the longer inland trips include hotel pickup, which is well worth having given the distances involved, and most options are free to cancel up to 24 hours before.

Three Chichen Itza trips run from Cancun and they differ mainly in what gets bundled with the ruins: one adds lunch, one adds Cenote Chichikan, and one adds a tequila tasting. All three are listed below at £43 so you can compare the itineraries before you book.