Few things are as inviting and intimidating as going into the fresh, clear water underground when the outside temperature is around 85 degrees (F). Upon entering the cave, you know you’re visiting a small segment of one of the world’s most extensive underground rivers.

At one point, at the end of the 19th century, the Yucatan Peninsula used to produce 90% of the rope and burlap bags that the world consumed. These products resulting from the henequen industry had provided economic support for this region since the time of the Maya and during the colonial period. The peninsula became covered in henequen plantations. On these fields, great fortunes and luxurious haciendas flourished. It wasn’t until the arrival of synthetic fiber that the henequen boom came to an end. Currently, Xcaret has taken this part of history and made a new park attraction out of it.

As with other nations, Mexico is a combination of cultures. Each of its regions belongs to the country’s common history while at the same time retaining, to some degree, its own identity. Xcaret’s main show takes advantage of this rich palette of artistic styles to present it before the eyes of thousands of spectators. The show includes the most significant eras in Mexico’s national evolution.

This Caribbean blue, quieted in the “small inlet,” which gives Xcaret its name in Mayan language, is the hightlight of a visit to the park. Tranquility, safety and entertainment for all ages.

In its Aquarium, the Xcaret theme park has two main goals: to allow you to enjoy interactively, as well as to explain and to extol the plethora of life that the sea and the underground rivers hold within.

Xcaret protects more than 44 species of tropical birds. In a natural habitat, accompanied by the rest of the local fauna, species in danger of extinction reproduce: the red and green macaw, the Yucatecan parrot, the red-fronted parrot and the white-fronted parrot, the yellow-naped parrot, the fulvous whistling duck, the keel-billed toucan and the collared aracari, the ocellated turkey, the great curassow and the crested guan.

Xcaret is like a burning torch in the night throughout the passage of time. The gods lit it and it served as a magnet in this region of Mexico: a calm inlet offering protection from the Caribbean’s wind and waves just across from the sacred island of Cozumel. For hundreds of years, it was a hypnotic port. Upon the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, the jungle hid the site for several centuries, but its magnetism never faded. Today, Xcaret is an extraordinary theme park that invites millions of visitors to experience an intense and pleasant contact with the most ingenuous surprises in the universe: underground rivers, fish, birds, jaguars, turtles, dolphins, the reef…; the past and the current-day Maya World.