Cobá: the jungle city, the sacbé roads and the cenote that ends the day

Cobá is the first stop and the largest of the sites, a Maya city of perhaps fifty thousand people spread through jungle around two lagoons. Two hours here covers the two ball courts, the sacbé causeways that once linked the city to others across the peninsula, and Nohoch Mul, the tallest structure. The site is broad rather than compact, and a bicycle or pedicab rented at the entrance turns the distances into part of the visit.

Tulum follows: the walled port city on the cliffs, and the only major Maya site built on the coast. Two hours with a guide covers El Castillo, the Temple of the Frescoes and the wall itself. Coming after Cobá, the contrast is the point, a compact ceremonial core above the sea after a sprawling inland capital.

The Jaguar Park museum is a shorter stop of about forty-five minutes, holding artefacts recovered from across the region. It gives the stonework you have just walked through a context that signage at the sites does not.

Multum Ha cenote closes the day, and it is the stop most visitors welcome most. A cavern cenote reached by wooden steps, with emerald water, stalactites and resident bats and catfish. After eight hours in the sun the water is cold, clear and genuinely restorative.

Cobá sits inland on the road between Tulum and Nuevo X-Can, about 45 minutes from Tulum by car and clearly signposted. Colectivos run from Tulum's centre through the morning. Most organised tours combine the ruins with a cenote or the village of Cobá for lunch, which suits the drive.

Arrive early for the same reasons as anywhere in the region: cooler air, fewer groups, and the pyramid staircase largely to yourself.

Cobá flourished earlier than Tulum, with its peak roughly between 600 and 900 AD, when it is thought to have been one of the most populous cities in the region. Its power rested on control of trade routes rather than a coastal harbour. The city built 45 sacbeob, raised white limestone causeways, and the longest of them runs some 100 kilometres to Yaxuná in Yucatán, the longest known road of the ancient Maya world.

The name Cobá is usually translated as "waters stirred by wind," a reference to the shallow lagoons beside the site, which would have made settlement here viable in a landscape with almost no surface rivers. Water, not defence, explains the location.

Only a small fraction of the city has been cleared. Mounds visible from the paths are unexcavated structures, and the treeline in every direction hides more. That balance between the restored and the reclaimed is precisely what most visitors remember about Cobá.