Cancun: sun and sea, warm sands, tanned bodies. Sensual Caribbean land of rapture, with fantastic walls of coral and exuberant fragments of tropical forest. An amazing place with transparent waters that strip the bottom of the sea, and stone Mayan cities that unveil the secrets of history.

A generous landscape that is complemented by an impressive tourist infrastructure, provisioned with all that is needed to seduce the traveller. Herein fun is like the swell: it never ends, it repeats itself day after day; sometimes it goes up and it turns uncontrollable and impetuous as the high tide; in other occasions it is placid, a prolonged joy, like the caresses of the waters on the warm sand.

The tourist paradise of Cancun was the result of a plan elaborated by the Mexican government, in order to create a grandiose vacation centre in a remote area which offered the adequate conditions. The place was found and it turned to be a narrow fringe of sand with a seven shape, located at one of the extremes of the Yucatan peninsula, in the young state of Quintana Roo.

The selection could not have been better: a benign weather with an average temperature of 28° C, the imposing presence of the Caribbean Sea and its nearness to the monumental Mayan cities, where enough elements as to ensure the success of the project. A dream started to come true at the Mexican coasts.

The plan started to be executed during the administration of president Luis Echeverria (1970-1976), then, what once was a modest village inhabited by less than 100 people, would turn - little by little - into the largest tourist centre in the world, with an influx of over a million visitors a year.

Cancun is now synonymous of sea. Of bodies burnished by the sun, of bikinis and thongs, of cold beverages on the warm sand, of days spent swimming with the dolphins, of excursions to the depths of the Caribbean, of constant challenges to the waves on surfboards, of alliances with the wind to move forward on a sailboard, and of maximum adrenaline on a jet-ski.

Beaches and more beaches. Some of calm waters, such as Linda, Langosta and Tortugas, which are protected by the bay of Mujeres (Women) Island; others show energetic and impulsive currents, such as Las Ballenas, Delfines and San Miguelito; all facing the Caribbean, all beautiful, all inviting us to rest on their fine sands or to refresh on their pristine waters.

The fun stage changes during the night. It is no more the immensity of the sea or the cheering sand. In the dark, the blinking of the neon lights guide travellers into the bars and discotheques of autochthonous or cosmopolitan ambience, with speakers blasting with the sound of a ranchera or apparently dancing with the catching melodies of the Caribbean music.

The adventure is not over after enjoying the sea and the nightly toasts, Cancun is also history and wild nature, specially at the so called Mayan Riviera; a coastal fringe 160 kilometres long which extends down to the border with Belize, offering an interesting variety of archaeological and eco-tourist itineraries.

Tracks from the past at Coba, a city in the middle of various lagoons that was the starting point of the longest sacbeob (road) built by the Mayans; and at Tulum, a city glued to the top of a cliff and protected by extensive walls, are clear evidence of the greatness of the pre-Hispanic civilizations.

Spots with overflowing wildlife such as the Biosphere Reserve of Sian Ka'an, which reveals itself as a "gift from heaven" due to its generous geography and its great variety of flora and fauna; and Xel-Ha and Xcaret as well, charming Mayan coves turned nowadays into a national park and a tourist park respectively.

And at the coastal snake of the Mayan Riviera, there are excellent resorts in Playa del Carmen - one of the most sophisticated spots - and in Cozumel, the largest inhabited island in Mexico whose waters are the most transparent in the world, wherein scuba diving and snorkelling are practiced with assiduity.

Back to the restless city with its ostentatious Hotel Zone, its private beaches, its gigantic shopping malls, and the Kukulcan Boulevard that links the tourist centre with the calm streets of the town of Cancun, a more discreet place with less expensive lodges.

Cancun gives fun no truce. Its hotels and restaurants thought for demanding travellers and globetrotters, its superb Mayan compounds, its ecological strongholds and… beaches, lots of beaches. In here, there is time to enjoy what nature and man - each at its shift - have created only.