Orgy Time in Cancun

By Jimm Budd

Reporting From Mexico City

Member of the Society of American Travel Writers

Springtime is orgy time in Cancun. As might be expected, some people are delighted. Others are not.

During February and March, youths crowd into the hotels and onto the beaches for an annual bacchanalia, the Spring Break. This is the week between semesters at universities in the United States. Technically, it occurs in winter, but they still call it Spring Break. Not everyone who shows up is a student, either. Some come just for the fun.

The turquoise sea washing powdery beaches is only part of the appeal. In Cancun, as in the rest of Mexico, the minimum age for imbibing alcoholic beverages is 18. In the United States, it is 21.

That might not be a problem if a few illegal beers were sold in some cantina, but the festivities go on beyond the swinging doors of the saloons.

“We have naked girls cavorting on Kukulkán Boulevard,” protested the general director of a company selling time-share units. That sounded like a tourist attraction, but time-share firms, I was told, cater to families.

“Parents with small children don’t want to visit Cancun during February or March,” the executive fumed.

Cancun was built with foreign travelers in mind and is one of the most successful projects ever undertaken by the government. The idea was to bring in dollars, and that it does. North Americans, South Americans and Europeans keep crowding in, their numbers increasing every year. From what was raw jungle filled with serpents (in the Maya language Cancun means “snake nest”) this strip of sand has become the most popular vacation destination not only in Mexico but also in the entire Caribbean.

The hotel zone is on an island, a strip of talcum white sand washed by a turquoise sea and connected at either end to the mainland by bridges so short you may never realize it when you cross one. The island, surrounding a lagoon, is 22 kilometers long yet quite narrow, wide enough for only one avenue, Kukulkán Boulevard, which runs from one end to the other.

Those who work in the hotels live on the mainland in Cancun City, now a metropolis of some 300,000 souls. Some quite comfortable and inexpensive hotels can be found in the city, but they are, of course, a bus ride from the beach.

The first hotels, modest little places for the most part, line the stretch of beach closest to town. Along with low tariffs, they have another advantage: the surf is at its most gentle here. The water can get rough further out.

The Convention Center — where few conventions are held — marks the bend in the elbow and the liveliest part of the island, crowded with big luxury hotels, stores, shopping centers, outdoor cafes, bars, bistros, discos and night clubs.

Quieter are the even more magnificent resorts further out along the hotel zone. Getting back and forth, to be sure, can be something of a marathon in itself, but buses run the length of Kukulkán Boulevard and provide far better service than anything you can find in Mexico City.

Actually, once in Cancun, everybody seems to want to get out of town. A day can be spent over on Isla Mujeres, another at Xcaret or Xel-Há or one of the many other playgrounds down along the Maya Riviera.

But when the spring breakers arrive, things do get pretty wild. According to the Cancun correspondent for the Miami Herald, 12 kilos of used condoms were recovered from Cancun beaches in what sounds like a messy job.

And why are the authorities not discouraging this sort of behavior?

“Have you seen the size of our policemen?” asked the manager of one hotel. “Put a couple of them up against a bunch of New Yorkers, any one of whom could be a linebacker on a football team and our constables stand very little chance.”

The police, of course, carry firearms, but using them would not benefit Cancun tourism. Imagine the headlines: “Mexican Cops Gun Down College Kids.” Occasionally, I was told, an arrest is made, but a fine of $50, paid to the arresting officer on the spot, results in rapid release.

“Fifty dollars is what a policeman earns here in a week,” one local citizen explained.

Besides, points out a spokesperson for the local hotel association, the Spring Break invasion is not opposed by everyone. “Probably more money is spent here during February and March than during any other two months of the year.”

He did not mention the cost of repairing damage done to hotels by the rowdy revelers. Cancun brings in more tourist dollars than any other destination in Mexico. And tourism, with the exception of oil, brings in more dollars to Mexico than any single export does.

Thus the executive director of the Cancun Convention and Visitors Bureau refuses to classify the springtime spree as a problem.

“I would say it is more of a challenge,” he says. “We need to educate our young visitors about our laws.”

To accomplish this, a six-page single-spaced translated summary of the statutes that supposedly must be obeyed is distributed to spring-breakers on airplanes flying them in for their fiesta. Whether they will be read is another matter, although some passengers inspire others to giggle at the translator’s English.

One optimist mentions how Fort Lauderdale in Florida managed to put a stop to the springtime debaucheries and enhance its image as an elegant vacation destination. Cancun should be able to do the same thing, he argued. “We have had meetings and all of us agree about this. The American consular agent in Cancun has assured us she has no intention of defending lawbreakers.”