4 within 3½ hours · 3 under 2 hours
Playa del Carmen sits between its Pueblos Mágicos. Cozumel is a forty-minute ferry from the pier downtown, with the reefs that made Jacques Cousteau famous; Tulum, an hour south, has Maya ruins on a cliff above the sea. Inland, under two hours away, Valladolid is the colonial town of cenotes between Chichén Itzá and Ek Balam, and for a weekend you can continue to Espita, a Yucatán town almost no tourists see.
Best months for the area: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr (when most of these towns are dry with comfortable afternoons)
Day trips (under 2 hours) 3
Close enough to drive there and back from Playa del Carmen in a day. Closest first.
~1 h 10 min incl. ferry · 24 km
Best: Feb, Mar, Apr, May
Fiestas: Feb, May
1 h 43 min · 138 km
Best: Jan, Feb, Nov, Dec
Fiestas: Jan, Feb, Apr, May, Oct, Nov
Weekend escapes (2 to 3½ hours) 1
Worth a night or two. Closest first.
On the map
Getting there
Playa del Carmen has no airport with scheduled flights; the usual one to fly into is Tulum (TQO).
A car is the easiest way to reach most of these towns; the bigger ones also have direct buses from Playa del Carmen. Each pueblo's page has its own getting-there notes.
Drive times are from OpenStreetMap routing without traffic. Times marked ~ are estimated from the distance and may run longer on mountain roads.