We camped in Cancun before it became a major resort. We used to free camp on the point where all the hotels are now located. We spent months by Playa del Carmen before it became a tourist zone. All that was there was a small hotel, an ice plant and a vegetable stand. Because the Westfalia just had an ice chest and not a fridge, we had to drive into Playa every third day for ice and vegetables.
Xcaret was just a walk-in cenote area with one restaurant at the corner of the highway. Tulum was a dumpy little town with nothing other than the ruins and beach in sight.
Akumal is much the same now as it was when we first came here in '79, minus the developments on Half Moon Bay and the all-inclusives down the beach.
Over the years and throughout our travels in Mexico we kept gravitating back to the Yucatan and Quintana Roo. We spent three winters in Mexico before my teaching career limited us to fly in vacations. We have seen much of this country from the Belize border back up to the US.
On our first trip to this area, we camped on a beautiful beach called Paamul. Surprisingly, Paamul is still there and not bought out by the big resorts. There were always about ten or eleven small units camped in Paamul way back when. Now the bigger RVs have taken over and built a small village where we used to sit in our Westfalia, just killing time! We had to pay 75 cents a day to camp on the beach and use the very poor washrooms....all owned and run by some old Mexican and his grandson.
Back to presnt time....we took the collectivo to Paamul on Tuesday to see what was being done to our old stomping grounds and found quite a few houses for sale. I shouldn't call them houses as they are thatched coverings over the RV...some on the beach and some set farther back into the jungle. Even so, it looks like a thriving place, but I don't see how it can remain much longer with the resorts wanting more beach area all the time. Sorry, but he humidity was steaming up our lens so the pictures are a little blurred.
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