Attractions in Cozumel

The island sits on the leeward edge of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, and the named sites along its west shore are what the whole visitor economy is built on.

Palancar is not one reef but a stretch of coral buttresses several kilometres long, split by divers into Gardens, Horseshoe, Caves and Bricks. Sand chutes run between coral heads the size of buildings, and the shallow inshore section is where snorkel boats go.

Santa Rosa Wall is the classic Cozumel drop-off: a wall that starts around fifty feet and disappears into blue, overhangs, tunnels and a current that is usually doing you a favour.

Punta Sur Reef holds Devil's Throat, a vertical chimney through the coral that opens onto the wall well below a hundred feet. It is a genuine advanced dive and should be booked as one.

Columbia works twice: a deep wall of huge pinnacles, and Columbia Shallows, a bright, sandy, twenty-foot garden that is one of the best snorkel sites in the Caribbean.

Paradise Reef sits close to shore near the southern piers. Shallow, easy, and the island's standard night dive, where the splendid toadfish — barred, whiskered, and found nowhere on earth but Cozumel's reefs — comes out of its ledge.

Chankanaab Reef is reachable from the beach inside the park, which makes it the rare Cozumel reef you can visit without a boat.

Punta Sur Eco Beach Park takes the island's entire southern tip and puts four different things inside one gate. The Faro Celarain lighthouse, whose small navigation museum covers the island's wrecks and shipping, and whose stairs are the closest thing Cozumel has to a viewpoint. An observation tower over Laguna Colombia, where crocodiles are genuinely resident and genuinely visible. El Caracol, a small Maya structure whose shell-like form is often said to have worked as a wind-driven warning whistle before storms — a good story, treated with appropriate caution. And a long, quiet beach with a reef offshore. Admission runs in the low-to-mid twenties per adult with children less, it is cash only, and it closes one day a week at the time of writing. Confirm before you commit a taxi fare.

Chankanaab is ten to fifteen minutes south of the main piers and is the most accessible attraction on the island. The draw is shore-entry snorkelling onto a real reef in calm, shallow water, plus a botanical garden of Mexican and Caribbean plants, replica Maya structures, a submerged bronze Christ figure, and tiered pricing that runs from basic park access up to an all-inclusive pass with food and drink. It also runs sea lion shows and dolphin encounter programmes, which are a choice each visitor should make with their own eyes open.

San Gervasio was the most important Maya site on the island and a pilgrimage destination in its own right. It was dedicated to Ix Chel, goddess of the moon, medicine, weaving and childbirth, and Maya women from the mainland were expected to make the crossing at least once in their lives, paddling the twelve-mile channel by canoe to leave offerings here. What stands today is a set of small, low limestone structures — Ka'na Nah, the arch, Las Manitas, the Nohoch Nah group — linked by sacbeob, the raised white causeways the Maya built between them, through low forest.

Go in the first hour it opens. The site is inland, there is no sea breeze, the heat builds fast and the mosquitoes are serious after rain. Bring repellent and bring cash; admission is around $14.50 and card payment has not historically been available. Guides wait at the entrance and are worth taking, because the structures are modest and the story is not.

El Cedral, in the island's south and reached by a short spur off the coast road, is the oldest settlement on Cozumel and the site of a small surviving Maya structure that now sits beside a modern church and a village square. It is a fifteen-minute stop rather than a morning. Around late April and early May the village holds the Festival de El Cedral, a multi-day fair with music, food and horse racing that is one of the island's genuinely local events; dates shift, so check locally rather than planning a trip around them.

San Miguel de Cozumel is the island's only town and it has a real life independent of the ships. The waterfront boulevard, Avenida Rafael E. Melgar, carries the malecón, and the main square sits a short walk in from it; on Sunday evenings the plaza fills with families, music and food stalls in a way that has nothing to do with tourism.

The Museo de la Isla de Cozumel, on the malecón, is small, air-conditioned and better than it looks from the street: the island's reef ecology, its Maya history and the hurricane record, in a couple of hours. It is the single most useful rainy-hour building on Cozumel.

Punta Langosta is both a cruise pier and a shopping complex, and along with the blocks immediately around the other two piers it forms the duty-free and jewellery belt. Prices there reflect the rent.

Walk three or four blocks inland, to Avenida 10, 15 and 30 and the market streets around Calle Salas, and the pricing changes completely. Taquerías with plastic chairs, fruit stands, hardware shops, a municipal market. Nothing about this is hidden or secret, it is simply on the other side of a line most visitors do not cross because the gangway points the other way.

Discover Mexico Park, south of town, does scale models of Mexico's major landmarks with tequila and chocolate tastings. It sounds thin, and it works better than expected with children or on a wet afternoon.