The Bay of Campeche on Mexico’s Gulf Coast has never been a destination for tourists. The city of Veracruz located in the midst of the country’s petroleum rich lowlands is Mexico’s busiest port. With high temperatures and equally high humidity it is the quintessential steamy tropical port city. Consequently this part of the country has remained overlooked as tourists opt for places like the Yucatan Peninsula with its white sand beaches, turquoise blue waters and constant Gulf Stream breeze. From its inception in the 1970s when the Mexican government slated the area for major tourism development, the Yucatan has grown from sleepy fishing villages to international resort destinations like Cancun, Playa del Carmen and the Costa Maya. Today, many of these areas are overrun with as many as seven cruise ships in port on any one day. Always looking for new areas to expand the variety of ports on seven day Caribbean itineraries, the cruise industry along with the Mexican government, has developed a new port on the Gulf Coast. Puerto Chiapas is advertised as the gateway to the magnificent Maya ruins of Palenque. Normally considered one of the more “difficult” sites to visit because of its remote location, the existence of a port within easy driving distance of the site is exciting and frightening. Knowing that Palenque is one of the most beautiful Classic Maya city states it is exciting that more people will have the opportunity to see it and appreciate their great achievements. Frightening in that as has been the case in other Maya sites like Tulum and Chichen Itza, the wear and tear of millions of visitors has degraded and destabilized structures requiring them to be off limits to the public forever more. In addition to Palenque, I am not sure what other activities are offered during this port stop. The region of the country is still untouched and I am sure there are many natural areas of interest. It is hard to say how the increase in tourism will effect not only the site but the local economy; hopefully all those factors have been carefully considered with the opening of the port. Only time will tell. If any of you visit the area in the near future, I would sincerely be interested in hearing from you regarding your impressions. If you’d like to read more about what is being planned for Puerto Chiapas, link on the following link http://travel.latimes.com/articles/sns-trvrail2-wk2.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 2:45 pm and is filed under General, Exotic cruises, Community board, Fun, Cruise News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.