Cancun - City of Mexico

Cancún is a coastal city in Mexico's easternmost state, Quintana Roo, on the Yucatán Peninsula. Cancun is located on the Yucatan Channel that separates Mexico from the island of Cuba in the Greater Antilles. The Cancun region is sometimes known as the Mexican Caribbean.

Cancun is the municipal seat of the Benito Juárez municipality and a world-renowned tourist resort. The city centre is located on the mainland which connects the Nichupté and Bojórquez lagoons to a narrow "7" shaped island where the modern beachfront hotels are located. The island of Isla Mujeres is located off the coast and is accessible by boat from Puerto Juarez.

Originally known as Ekab, what is now the northern district of the state of Quintana Roo was thickly populated by people who spoke the language now known as Mayan when the Spanish arrived, according to the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo. In the years after the Conquest, most of the population died off or left as a result of disease, warfare, piracy, and other famines, leaving only small settlements on Isla Mujeres and Cozumel Island.The early history of the area is discussed in "Boca Iglesias, Where the Conquest of Mexico Began" by Fidel Villanueva, official historian of Isla Mujeres.

The city of Cancún resulted from a 1967 study by Banco de México to determine the feasibility of capturing more dollars and other foreign exchange through tourism development. Although the story goes that Cancún was picked by a computer, it was actually selected after extensive research and exploration by the bank's researchers. Banco de México obtained a $27 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank to install the first infrastructure. When development was started on Jan. 23, 1970, Isla Cancún had only three residents, caretakers of the coconut plantation of don José de Jesús Lima, who lived on Isla Mujeres, and there were only 117 people living in nearby Puerto Juárez, a fishing village and military base.

The city has grown rapidly over the past thirty years to become a city of approximately 600,000 residents, covering the former island and the nearby mainland. Most 'cancunenses' here are from Yucatán and other Mexican states. A growing number are from the rest of America and Europe. The municipal authorities have struggled to provide public services for the constant influx of people, as well as to control squatters and irregular developments, which now occupy an estimated ten to fifteen percent of the mainland area on the fringes of the city.

There are about 150 hotels in Cancún with more than 24,000 rooms and 380 restaurants. Four million visitors arrive each year in an average of 190 flights daily. The Hotel Zone of Cancun is shaped like a 7 with bridges on each end connecting to the mainland. Hotels on the vertical or long side of the 7 tend to have rougher beaches and beach erosion can be a problem. Resorts on the horizontal or short end of the seven tend to have more gentle surf because the waves here are blocked by the island of Isla Mujeres which lies just off shore. The Hotel Zone offers a broad range of accommodations, ranging from relatively inexpensive motel-style facilities in the older section closest to the mainland, to high-priced luxury hotels in the later sections, great malls, theme parks and swimming with dolphins activity.

Cancun is also the gateway to the Riviera Maya, another tourist pole in the area, where people go attracted by the numerous archaelogical sites, as Coba and Tulum, the many cenotes, the ecological parks as Xcaret and charming towns as Playa del Carmen.

The temperature of the city is warm and tropical, moderated by the marine breezes created by onshore trade-winds, which circulates through its avenues. More temperate conditions occur from November to February and it is hottest from April to September, due to proximity to the Caribbean and Gulf humidity is high all-year around, especially so during Hurricane Season.

The tropical storm season lasts from May to December, the rainy season extends into January with peak precipitation in September. February to early May tend to be drier with only occasional scattered showers. Although large hurricanes are rare, they have struck near to Cancun in recent years, Hurricane Wilma in 2005 being the largest and almost twenty years ago, Hurricane Gilbert made a devastating direct hit on Cancún in September 1988.

Although Cancún is better known as a travel and tourism destination, in recent years some colleges and universities have been offering higher educations to both Mexican and foreign students.

The first higher education institution established in the area was the Instituto Tecnológico de Cancún. Some other followed such as Universidad La Salle Cancún, Universidad Anahuac Cancún, Universidad Tecnológica de Cancún, Universidad del Caribe, and more recently the Universidad Interamericana para el Desarrollo and the Tec Milenium.