Home»All Photographs»Travel Adventures»Playa del Carmen, Mexico»Playa - Downtown at Night - 10/08/2009

John, Diane and I drove from the Royal Haciendas Resort to downtown Playa where we ate dinner and photographed some of the street scape.

Playa del Carmen (Xaman Ha' or Pláaya in Modern Maya) is a city on the coast of the Caribbean Sea, in the northeast of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

The first recorded visitors to the beaches of what is now Playa del Carmen came during the Early Classic Period (a.d. 300-600) of the Mayan civilization. Then called Xaman-Ha, or "waters of the north," Playa del Carmen was a rest stop of sorts for travelers making their way from the great cities of the Mayan world to the island of Cozumel.

Today Playa del Carmen, or just "Playa" as it is colloquially referred to, is the center of the Riviera Maya concept, which runs from south of Cancún to Tulum and the Sian Ka'an biosphere reserve.