As Tourists Trickle In, A Sleepy Town Stirs ALL EDITIONS

• Published in: Newsday
• Main Author: By William McDonald. William McDonald is an assistantnews editor at Newsday
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 28.09.1986
• Edition: Combined editions
• Subjects: PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico

By day the town bakes under the sun and its people, mostly poor and most of them Indios - of mixed Mayan and Spanish descent - abandon the streets for extended siestas, many of them heading for hammocks that swing under the thatched roofs of sim ple woodframe or cinderblock houses. By night the town sleeps under a blanket of silence. A few restaurants may stay open until 9 p.m. or so, but for the most part Playa del Carmen's nightlife only chirps. Such is the timeless, perhaps the romantic, side of this town. But walk along its dirt or limestone streets and you will see evidence of the late 20th Century, and maybe harbingers of the 21st. With the exception of telephones, the town's two luxury hotels, the Playacar and the Molcas, offer most of the amenities of their counterparts in Cancun - at half the rates (a double room is about $60 a night November-April, $35 in the off-season). An assortment of restaurants are scattered up and down the town's dozen or so blocks, and shops here sell everything from leather and silver to video recorders. Along the beach you can scuba dive, windsurf or snorkel. To the south is a growing complex of condominiums and waterfront villas that, except for the Mayan ruins studding the grounds, would not be out of place in West Palm Beach. On the north side of town a new hotel is going up, and next door to it Pemex, the Mexican petroleum company, is building a gas station - Playa del Carmen's first. But these have been relatively small incursions by the developed world, and the reason undoubtedly has had to do with the town's remoteness. To get here from Cancun you take one of the few paved roads in the Yucatan's hinterland, two-lane Rte. 307. A mile or so past Cancun's international airport you pass the last construction site on the city's outskirts. From that point on there is nothing but mile after mile of scrub forest, a few small struggling farms, a cluster or two of thatch-roofed homes, parched empty fields, and brush fires. Brush fires every few miles, it seems, some burning right to the edge of the road. Newsday map by Richard Cornett - Location of Playa del Carmen - see microfilm. Photos by William McDonald - A small chapel, above, outside Playa del Carmen; at bottom, the hotel Playacar offers luxury lodgings and an unspoiled stretch of beach.