El Rey - The Maya Port and Its Iguanas
Photo: Gary Todd from Xinzheng, China, CC0 (cropped)
A stop on Cancun: Downtown and the Hotel Zone, a free self-guided tour.
Long before hotels lined this coast, the Maya ran a port town here. El Rey is the largest of the ancient sites on Cancun's island, with 47 structures laid out among the grass and palms.
People fished and made salt here for centuries, and the town traded along a chain of Caribbean ports that included Xcaret, Xel-Ha and Tulum. Most of the buildings you see date from about 1300 to 1500, when newcomers from the interior of the Yucatan Peninsula arrived and the town grew. It was abandoned after the Spanish came in the 1500s.
Nobody knows its Maya name. El Rey, the king, comes from a carved head of a richly adorned figure that early visitors took for a ruler. In 1975 archaeologists found a high-ranking burial here with a copper axe and ornaments of shell and bone.
Today the true lords of El Rey are iguanas, sunning themselves on the old stones. Check current hours before you visit.
Getting here: Ride the bus or a taxi about 1.5 km further south to km 18. The site entrance is on the lagoon side of the boulevard.
Did you know?: In 1909 two English travelers, Channing Arnold and Frederick Frost, found the carved head that gave El Rey its name.
Photo op: Crouch low and frame an iguana on a stone platform, with a temple ruin behind it.
More on Wikipedia: El Rey archaeological site · Tulum · Yucatan Peninsula
Stops on this tour
- Parque de las Palapas - Where Locals Gather
- Mercado 28 - The Market With a Number
- Playa Langosta - The Calm Side of the Seven
- Playa Tortugas - The Island of Women Across the Bay
- Punta Cancun - Where the Seven Bends
- Playa Chac Mool - Named for a Stone Figure
- Nichupte Lagoon - The Other Water
- Museo Maya and San Miguelito - Ruins Among the Towers
- El Rey - The Maya Port and Its Iguanas
- Playa Delfines and the Cancun Sign - The Big Finish