We are staying on Isla Mujeres the last week in April and want to visit Tulum. Can we do this as a day trip? I would appreciate suggestions as to the best way to make the trip. Thanks.

It's a pretty long trip, but you could conceivably do it.

Do you mean to visit the ruins or the town/beach?

If you mean the ruins, there are any number of tours that leave Cancun every day.

One of the problems with them is that a lot of them spend quite a bit of time driving around picking up people at the various hotels/resorts, and don't get on the road for awhile. You should confirm with them when you will actually GET to Tulum, and when you will get BACK to Cancun.

You could take the ferry over to Cancun and then the public bus down to Tulum. That is one of the less expensive ways.

You could rent a car and drive it. (I most likely would not do that. 307 can be dangerous and the taxi and bus drivers are FAST and sometimes reckless drivers.)

You could take a collectivo down. That would be the cheapest, but kind of long and a hassle.

The most expensive way is taxi or private transport, but it's also the easiest. We like to use Dita. getdita.com

Have fun!

Utter nonsense about the "risks" on highway 307.

Renting a car and driving down to Tulum is a GREAT idea and is EXTREMELY EASY to do.

The road is like driving a divided interstate in the U.S. You can do most of the route at 110km/hour. Easy, breezy, and no trouble at all doing it both ways in a single day.

Catch an early ferry from Isla Mujeres to Cancun. IMHO, the biggest danger of renting a car in Cancun is getting trapped into a sleazy timeshare sales pitch in order to get the "free" or "$10" rental car (or whatever the bait-du-jour might be).

Have fun!
Mark
www.tiogringo.com

I don't know what the arrangements would be from Isla Mujeres to Cancun, but we have driven the r/t from Cancun to Tulum in one day several times, always having lots of time to sightsee the ruins, eat, and one time we even did Xel-ha along with Tulum, plus driving. Not sure how much time going and coming from the island will take, but you should easily have time for Tulum from Cancun. Also, the driving is easy there.

DITTO Tiogringo: Very easy to drive in a rental car. It would be much more fun to get the rental car at an agency, i.e. Dollar, budget, Hertz so as not to get into the Time Share waste-a-your-time business. Your time is your own, the Ruins, Xel-Ha all doable in a day. There is a great swimming beach at Tulum that is hugely popular. Driving to Tulum is only about 2 hours. I was just there last September.