2 weeks in the Yucatán: a 14-day Riviera Maya itinerary

The route: 13 nights, Cancún back to Cancún

Two weeks buys five bases in the Yucatán, and one ferry decides the shape of it. Ultramar's Premium Plus crossing from Playa del Carmen to Cozumel costs 320 pesos one way and 640 round trip, with boats leaving roughly every 30 to 90 minutes between about 06:00 and 21:00 in both directions. Pick the morning you cross, and the rest of the trip arranges itself around it. ⁵

The plan below spends 13 nights: 2 in Cancún, 3 in Playa del Carmen, 4 on Cozumel, 3 in Tulum and 1 in Valladolid for Chichén Itzá. It runs one direction, south down the coast and then inland, so you unpack five times in a fortnight. Pesos are the currency at every gate on it. The Mexico country guide covers arrival, food and the wider country.

This route crosses places where Maayat'aan is an everyday language. Mexico's 2020 census counted 774,755 speakers, and INALI lists Cozumel, Benito Juárez (Cancún) and Felipe Carrillo Puerto among the municipalities where it is spoken. The archaeological sites on the itinerary are ancestral cities of those communities. Several of the cenotes are run by ejidos, Maya communal landholdings that set and collect their own fees. ^{11, 10}

This page prices the route, not the calendar: sargassum on the Caribbean beaches and the Atlantic hurricane season both move by month, and neither was researched here.

How do you get between Cancún, Tulum and Cozumel?

Fares read from the operators on 25 September 2026, in pesos first, with dollars at the Federal Reserve rate for 18 September.

Six legs, one bus operator, a train option and a ferry, and the five with confirmed fares come to about 1,109 pesos. That is USD 64.31 for a fortnight of movement, which is less than one dive day on Cozumel. Buses and boats run often enough on this coast that no leg needs booking weeks ahead. ^{4, 5, 6, 7, 2, 8}

The train is faster and the bus is cheaper, and the trip works either way. ADO starts at 124 pesos and leaves every 15 to 30 minutes, direct from Cancún airport Terminals 2, 3 and 4 as well as the Cancún Centro terminal. The Tren Maya segment reopened on 15 August 2026 with four daily departures each way, 46 to 52 minutes, at 148 pesos national and 197 pesos international tourist class. Launch-day 2024 prices are stale. ^{4, 12}

What do the ruins and cenotes actually cost?

At Tulum you pay three organizations to see one site. INAH's federal ticket is 210 pesos for a foreign visitor. GAFSACOMM, the site concessionaire, charges 295. CONANP, which runs the national park the ruins sit inside, charges 120. That is 625 pesos, about USD 36.24, before a single cenote. Gates open at 08:00 and close at 17:00, with last entry at 15:30. ^{1, 2}

Cobá is the quiet bargain of the four. The federal ticket is 210 pesos with no state or concession fee layered on, gates open 08:00 to 17:00 and last entry is 16:00. A visit outside those hours costs 730 pesos. ¹⁵

Cancún and Playa del Carmen: the first five nights

Two charges, a cash stop and a bus ride stand between the plane and the beach. Both charges are per person, both are payable before you settle in, and one of them has a copycat website problem worth knowing about. Do them in this order on the day you land. ¹⁶

1. 01

   Get pesos before the first gate

   Every fee on this route is quoted in pesos, and community-run cenotes take cash. MMT's ATM fees abroad comparison sets out the operator charge, the bank charge and the conversion offer you should refuse.

2. 02

   Pay VISITAX on a .gob.mx address

   Quintana Roo's tourist tax is mandatory for foreign visitors under Article 51 octies of the state's Law of Rights, and the official portal is visitax.gob.mx. That portal warns that .com lookalike sites overcharge. Travel sites report the fee at 283 pesos, about USD 16.41. ^{16, 17, 2}

3. 03

   Walk out to the ADO bay

   ADO runs direct to Playa del Carmen from Cancún airport Terminals 2, 3 and 4, from 124 pesos, every 15 to 30 minutes, in about 1 hour 20 minutes. Buses arrive at Terminal Turística on Fifth Avenue, with a second stop at Terminal Alterna on Avenida 20. Children under 5 sharing a seat ride free. ⁴

Check your airline ticket before you leave home, too. Mexico's tourist entry form is valid 180 days for a single entry, and air travelers usually pay it inside the fare as a Mexican tourism tax line; the 2026 fee is reported at 983 pesos, waived for stays of 7 days or fewer. ¹⁸

• Cancún, 2 nights. The Museo Maya de Cancún anchors the Hotel Zone stop, open Tuesday to Sunday with last entry at 16:30, an easy first afternoon before the trip properly starts. ¹³
• Playa del Carmen, 3 nights. The town is the hinge of the trip: ADO's Terminal Turística sits on Fifth Avenue, and the Cozumel boats leave from Terminal Marítima NAVEGA. ^{4, 5}
• One day trip, one slow day, one crossing. Ferries run roughly every 30 to 90 minutes from about 06:00, so the island morning can be whichever one suits you. ⁵

Cozumel: four nights, three dive days

Four nights on Cozumel buys three dive days and still leaves a morning for the boat home. A 2-tank boat dive runs USD 95 to 135 across operators. Pelagic Ventures prices its trips at 115 per person with the Cozumel Marine Park fee and tax already folded in, so the quote is what you hand over at the dock. Three days at that rate is USD 345. ⁸

The marine park fee is the line that moves between quotes. Charged separately it runs about USD 13 per diver per day on one dive operator's price page. CONANP publishes no figure we could read, so ask your operator whether the fee is inside the quote. MMT's guide to marine park and conservation fees sets out how the charge usually appears. ⁸

Tulum and the cenotes: who collects the fee

Gran Cenote sits on the road from Tulum toward Cobá, and the ejido that holds the land sets and collects its price directly. Travel sites report 500 pesos for Mexican and foreign visitors alike, 120 pesos for locals, with a life jacket at 50, snorkel gear at 80 and a locker at 30. The ejido publishes no price page, so carry more cash than the reported number. ¹⁰

An ejido is a communal landholding recognized in Mexican law, and along this road they are Maya communities running their own gates, hours and prices. That is why two cenotes twenty minutes apart can charge very different amounts for the same swim. Part of Cobá sits on ejido land too, and travel sites mention a separate community charge there that no community page confirmed. ^{10, 15}

• Tulum ruins, 625 pesos for a foreign visitor, open 08:00 to 17:00 with last entry at 15:30. Three separate fees, three separate collectors. ¹
• Cobá, 210 pesos on the federal ticket, open 08:00 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:00. Outside those hours the fee jumps to 730 pesos. ¹⁵
• Gran Cenote, a reported 500 pesos plus gear hire, run by the local ejido. Budget the add-ons: 50 for the life jacket, 80 for snorkel gear, 30 for a locker. ¹⁰
• Cenote Ik Kil, 240 pesos, with life jacket, locker and parking in the price, open 09:00 to 17:00 every day of the year. It is the one cenote on this route with a printed 2026 tariff. ⁹

Three nights in Tulum is enough for the ruins on one morning, the cenote road on another and a day with nothing planned. Swim gear, a dry bag and a padlock cover almost everything the cenotes ask you to hire. MMT's one-bag packing list for the tropics builds a two-week kit around exactly this kind of route.

Is Chichén Itzá worth a night in Valladolid?

Chichén Itzá opens at 08:00, closes at 16:00 and takes its last visitors at 15:00, which makes a bed inland worth more than an early alarm on the coast. The gate is 653 pesos for a foreign visitor: INAH's 105-peso ticket plus Yucatán state's CULTUR fee of 548. Mexican nationals pay 190 on the state fee, and Yucatán residents are exempt from it. ³

Cenote Ik Kil pairs with the site. General admission is 240 pesos with life jacket, locker and parking included, children under 1.20 m pay 150, and a 530-peso package adds a buffet meal and one drink. It opens 09:00 to 17:00 all year. The operator puts it about 1.5 hours from Tulum and about 2 hours from Cancún or Playa del Carmen; by train it is the Chichén Itzá station plus a taxi of roughly five minutes. ⁹

Then ride home. ADO priced Valladolid to Cancún between 255 and 406 pesos for travel on 25 September 2026, the spread coming from departure time and class. If your flight home is early, add a fourteenth night by the airport rather than riding a dawn bus to catch it. ⁷

What does two weeks in the Yucatán cost before hotels?

The part of this trip with a printed price is 2,837 pesos, about USD 164.51 - the four gates at 1,728 pesos plus the cheapest confirmed transfer chain at 1,109. Add the two mandatory per-person charges below and the reported floor is about 4,103 pesos, USD 237.92, before a bed or a meal. Beds, food and dive days move with your choices. ^{1, 3, 15, 9, 4, 6, 7, 5, 2}

Two per-person charges sit outside every table above. VISITAX is reported at 283 pesos and the 2026 tourist entry form at 983, a reported 1,266 pesos together, about USD 73.41. That is more than the entire transfer chain, and neither amount appears in print on a government page. Budget them, then confirm both in the payment flow. ^{17, 18, 2}

Beds are the line this page leaves to you. Prices on this coast swung by several times over for the same property across four booking sites on the same dates, and no operator publishes a fixed nightly rate, so printing one figure would mislead. Hold a nightly band per base instead, and test it: MMT's worksheet on what a 10 percent exchange-rate move does runs the arithmetic on a peso trip.

Do you need a car for a Yucatán road trip?

Public transport covers every leg of this route, so the car is a decision about cenotes and about time. ADO runs Cancún to Playa del Carmen every 15 to 30 minutes, the Tren Maya segment carries four departures a day each way, and Ultramar's boats leave roughly every 30 to 90 minutes. None of that needs a steering wheel. ^{4, 12, 5}

Where a car earns its keep is the road from Tulum toward Cobá, with Gran Cenote and its neighbors strung along it, and the run inland to Ik Kil, which the operator puts about 1.5 hours from Tulum. Taxis and colectivos cover those trips too, at prices set on the day. ^{10, 9}

No rental rate appears on this page: no rental company publishes a fixed rate for this route, and Mexican third-party liability insurance is priced at the counter, where it often costs more than the car. Get a written quote with the insurance line spelled out before you fly. A car-free fortnight also rewards a smaller bag, which is the argument in MMT's one-bag travel guide.