The rise of Instagram and Airbnb have influenced Tulum’s rapid transformation from backpackers’ paradise to hotel-dense tourism hub, writes Natalie Compton When you’re floating in the balmy, turquoise water, parts of Mexico’s Quintana Roo coastline still look timeless. Dense tangles of palm trees and shrubs line the soft, sandy beach. Walled ruins peer down from their limestone cliff.
Pelicans fly in formation overhead. It’s easy to understand why hippies, backpackers and armchair archaeologists began flocking to this pocket of the Yucatán Peninsula in the 1970s. Once you swim back to shore and towel off, the fantasy of the untouched Tulum begins to fade.
This patch of the Caribbean has been an ancient Maya trading hub, a quiet fishing village, a bohemian paradise, and a vacation spot for celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Paris Hilton. Today it retains elements of all these identities, plus a newer one: mainstream tourism hub..