Ruta de los Cenotes

Landscape and ecology

The Yucatán Peninsula has almost no surface rivers outside its south; rain infiltrates the limestone and moves through fractures and conduits, and usable fresh water forms a thin lens over intruding seawater ⁸. Cenotes are collapsed openings into that system ⁹. Around Puerto Morelos, groundwater surfaces through cenotes and springs and flows towards the sea; the Ramsar information sheet for the reef park estimates average discharge north of 20°N at about 8.6 million m³ per kilometre of coast a year, and warns that pollution inland can reach the coastal and marine park ⁶. The park, part of the Mesoamerican Reef, covers 9,066 ha and has been a Ramsar wetland of international importance since 2004 ⁷.

A 2025 study of cenotes across the Great Mayan Aquifer found elevated E. coli in five cenotes, elevated nitrate in two and PFAS compounds in eight, with isotope evidence that most of the systems are connected to regional groundwater flows ¹⁰. The study does not report data for this route specifically.

Communities and livelihoods

Much of the land along the route belongs to the ejidos of Leona Vicario and Puerto Morelos, whose representatives took part in 2025 meetings with state and municipal agencies on land-use planning and legal certainty for their land ⁴. The municipal planning institute identified around 240 points of economic activity along the route, including ecoparks, real-estate developments, restaurants and lodgings, that need permits, environmental impact assessments, solid-waste management and possibly basic urban services ⁴. In December 2024 the municipality and state agencies had launched a joint process to regularise properties along the road ⁵.

These are official accounts. We found no sources in which ejido members or cenote operators describe, in their own words, how the route's growth has affected their livelihoods or the water.

Tourism model and development

Puerto Morelos officials put visitor numbers at 2,500 to 3,000 people a day ³. Attractions range from open cenotes with jumping platforms and zip lines to cave cenotes known to divers ². Sargassum has also pushed locals inland: research in Puerto Morelos reported in 2022 found that 56% of bathers who stopped going to the beach in sargassum season visited cenotes instead, and that nitrite and nitrate levels rose with bather numbers, which the researcher said did not in itself amount to contamination ¹¹.

In March 2025 the municipality announced plans to widen the route's road from two to four lanes and add a cycle lane, to boost tourism and sporting events; the work required further studies, funding and coordination between three levels of government, and the report did not say construction had begun ³. The same report said the municipal ecology department was surveying the condition of the cenotes, with health and water studies also under way ³.

Regenera Luxury, which is affiliated with this publication, lists the route among the destinations on its website but does not describe a programme there ¹.