City overview
Cancun is Mexico's best-known Caribbean resort city, a seventeen-mile barrier island of white sand and turquoise water lined end to end with resorts, with a working Mexican city of nearly a million people behind it and the Maya interior a short drive inland. Isla Mujeres lies a twenty-minute ferry ride offshore and trades the high-rise strip for golf carts, a walkable town centre and the calm shallow water of Playa Norte. Between them they cover almost every kind of trip, from all-inclusive beach weeks to diving, Maya ruins and day sails. Jewish travel here is unusually well served for a resort destination: Chabad Jewish Center of Cancun sits inside Kukulcan Plaza in the heart of the Hotel Zone, Cancun's own Orthodox community, Neve Shalom, numbers around forty-eight families, and Chabad of Isla Mujeres runs a shul and a kosher restaurant on the island itself. Three certified restaurants operate in the Hotel Zone under Mexican supervision, and both Chabad houses serve Shabbat meals to visitors who book ahead.
Parque de las Palapas
Cancun · Free
The city's real central square, busiest in the evening when families fill the park and the surrounding streets, and the best place to see Cancun as a working Mexican city rather than a resort strip.
Time needed
1-2 hours
Hours
Open daily 24 hours
Tips
Liveliest after dark and at weekends. A short walk from the Avenida Tulum hotels.
Neighborhood
Downtown Cancun
Activity providers
Kosher map of Cancun
Pick a place on the map or search an address or hotel to see what is kosher around it.