Cancún is a city in southeast Mexico on the northeast coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. The meaning of the city’s name is unknown, and it is also unknown whether the name is of Maya origin. It has undergone a comprehensive transformation from being a fisherman’s island surrounded by virgin forest and undiscovered shores to being one of the two most well-known Mexican resorts.
About Cancún, Mexico in brief
Cancún is a city in southeast Mexico on the northeast coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. It is a significant tourist destination in Mexico and the seat of the municipality of Benito Juárez. The city is on the Caribbean Sea and is one of Mexico’s easternmost points. In older English-language documents, the city’s name is sometimes spelled ‘Cancoon’, an attempt to convey the sound of the name. The meaning of the city’s name is unknown, and it is also unknown whether the name is of Maya origin. It has undergone a comprehensive transformation from being a fisherman’s island surrounded by virgin forest and undiscovered shores to being one of the two most well-known Mexican resorts, along with Acapulco. The World Tourism Organization awarded the Best of the Best award for excellence and good governance to the Trust for Tourism Promotion of CancúN on February 3, 2007. Most ‘Cancunenses’ are from Yuc atán and other Mexican states. A growing number are from the rest of the Americas and Europe. The municipal authorities have struggled to provide public services for the constant influx of people, as well as limiting squatters and irregular developments, which now occupy an estimated ten to fifteen percent of the mainland area on the fringes of the City.
Apart from the island tourist zone, the Mexican residential section of theCity, the downtown part of which is known as ‘El Centro’, follows a master plan that consists of giant trapezoids with a central, open, non-residential area in u-shaped residential streets. The main area in downtown is some 30km south of Tulum, which is the north-south artery, connecting downtown to the airport. Another major road is Bonakak, which runs roughly parallel to Ave ampak which serves as the primary road through the primary hotel zone. The first financed hotel was a Hyatt, Cancun Caribe, but the first hotel built was the Playa Blanca, which later became a Blue Bay hotel, now named Temptation Resort. At the time it was an elite destination, famous for its virgin white sand beaches. The color blue symbolises the Caribbean sea, the yellow the sand and the red the sun with its rays. The name Cancum or Cankun first appears on 18th-century maps. It is also known to its Maya inhabitants as Nizuc ) meaning either ‘point of grass’ or ‘nest of snakes’ In the years after the Conquest, much of the Maya population died off or left as a result of disease, warfare, piracy, and famines, leaving only small settlements.
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This page is based on the article Cancún, Mexico published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 02, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
