The Train Maya: Mexico's ambitious new tourism megaproject

I first visited Tulum Pueblo as a backpacker in 2017. Located in Mexico's south-eastern Yucatán Peninsula, the beach town is famed for its turquoise waters, eco-boutique hotels and clifftop Maya ruins. It is known as something of a green alternative to the skyscraper resorts of Cancún and Playa del Carmen to the north, and I spent the week doing beach yoga, turtle-spotting in the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve, and biking along hot, dusty paths to jungle-clad cenotes believed by the ancient Maya to be portals to the underworld. 

Since my visit, tourism in Tulum has boomed. What was once a strip of wild beach scattered with palm leaf-roofed meditation retreats is now one of Mexico's most popular tourist destinations. In 2022, Tulum Ruins – one of the last cities inhabited by the Maya before the Spanish conquest in 1526, and the only one built overlooking the sea – received more than 1.3 million visits. That same year, the number of July and August visitors to Yucatán's largest international airport, Cancún, were up by nearly four million compared to pre-pandemic numbers. 

In response to the area's staggering growth, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ordered the military to build a new international airport in Tulum at breakneck speed. In December 2023, less than two years after construction began, Obrador inaugurated the airport with its first three inbound flights. While the new airport currently only receives domestic travellers, international flights are expected to begin in March 2024. 

However, the opening of ​​Tulum's new airport is just one piece of a far-more ambitious tourism and infrastructure plan – one that Obrador has boldly called "the greatest construction project in the world".

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