I Get Why People Call Tulum Overrated. They Never Make It Past the Beach Clubs.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: if your entire Tulum trip is the beach road, then yes, Tulum is overrated. I’ll say it.

The playa strip has become a parody of itself. Thirty-quid cocktails, “Mayan” wellness ceremonies invented last Tuesday, influencers queuing for the same macramé swing, and traffic that turns a two-mile road into a forty-minute crawl. If that’s all you see, you’ll go home and tell everyone Tulum is a scam, and I won’t argue with you. It’s so very boring.

But here’s the thing the disappointed crowd has in common: they never left the main playa. They flew in, parked themselves on the sand, paid the beach-club tax, and never drove twenty minutes in any direction. And that’s a genuine shame, because the Tulum that’s actually worth the trip starts exactly where the playa ends.

So this is my case for the defence: the offbeat, jungle and ruins Tulum that the “overrated” reviews never reach. Leave the beach. Here’s where to go.

Sian Ka’an: The Reason Tulum Deserves the Trip

If you do one thing off the main playa, make it this.

Sian Ka’an is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and it begins right where the Tulum hotel zone runs out: though “begins” undersells it wildly. The protected area sprawls across more than 1.3 million acres of tropical forest, marsh, mangrove and some of the most jaw-droppingly empty beaches you will ever stand on. After the human crush of the playa, the sheer emptiness of it is almost startling.

There are two ways in from Tulum: the coastal road that carries on past the hotel zone, and a second entrance up at the Muyil ruins (more on that below). Do both if you can, but they’re a long drive apart, so give each its own day.

One honest note, because things have changed: you can’t really wing this one anymore. You’ll want a car, or you’ll need to book a tour, and the tours have become the standard way in, running most of the day and bundling in snorkelling, wildlife spotting, or a jeep run deeper into the reserve. I recommend hiring a car if you can, it means you have the freedom to explore the reserve at your leisure and with that comes sprawling expanses of empty beaches you’ll have to yourself.

It’s no longer the undiscovered secret it once was. But “you have to make a bit of effort” is rather the whole point of this experience and the effort is exactly what filters out the beach-club crowd and leaves you with the space.

If you drive yourself, you can take it at your own pace, and honestly I wouldn’t blame you for just finding an empty stretch of sand and staying there. One rule though, and it’s not optional: don’t swim in the coastal lagoons without a guide. Like a lot of the Yucatán, there are crocodiles. The reserve is wild in the literal sense.

Muyil Ruins: Mayan Pyramids, Minus the Coach Parties

Everyone funnels to the Tulum ruins for that cliff-top photo, and fair enough, it’s a stunner. But for ruins without the coach parties, drive twenty-five minutes south to Muyil, also known as Chunyaxché, tucked just off Highway 307.

This was a Maya town that flourished for well over a thousand years, from around 250 AD right through to the 17th century, though most of what’s left dates from its later centuries. It’s not a vast site, but that’s part of the appeal: the structures rising straight out of the jungle, often with barely another soul around, hit differently when you’re not shuffling past in a crowd.

Worth knowing before you go: Muyil was closed for a couple of years for restoration work and only reopened in early 2026, so check the current opening hours before you set off, as it sometimes runs reduced schedules. There’s a small separate fee (around 120 pesos) to continue past the ruins into the northern slice of the Sian Ka’an reserve — pay it. From there you can hire a guide for a boat trip across the Muyil lagoon, connected by an ancient Maya canal to the larger Chunyaxché lagoon and eventually the sea, or just sit by the water and take in how enormous and quiet it all is.

Top tip from bitter experience: bring mosquito repellent. Nothing reminds you you’re in the middle of the jungle quite like a swarm deciding you’re lunch.

Azulik Uh May: The Bonkers Jungle Art Place Nobody Tells You About

Now for the strangest, and one of the best.

A quick but crucial distinction first: there are two Azuliks. There’s the famous one on the beach road — the Instagram hotel everyone knows — and then there’s Azulik Uh May, set deep in the jungle about thirty minutes inland. They are not the same experience, and it’s the jungle one you want. The beach version is peak influencer Tulum, the exact thing this article is arguing against. The inland one is something else entirely.

We had no idea it even existed until a friend suggested a road trip out there (shoutout Rebecca), and it turned out to be completely, gloriously bonkers.

It bills itself as a holistic centre built to reconnect people with the environment, which sounds like exactly the invented-wellness nonsense I was mocking earlier: except this one’s a genuine work of architectural madness. Swooping, hand-shaped biomorphic structures grown out of the jungle, all curves and shadow and filtered light, with the contemporary art space SFER IK at its heart. You take your shoes off and the building does something to your sense of where you are.

I’ll be straight about the catch: it isn’t cheap, and the pricing is tiered in a way that can niggle as you pay to get in, and more to see more.

But unlike the beach-club tax, you’re paying for something genuinely one-of-a-kind and, out here in the jungle, often nearly empty. And yes — fine — it’s also a ludicrously good spot for a poser-ass shot for the ‘Gram. I’m only human.

Even the Tacos Are Better Off the Strip

One more, because leaving the playa pays off at dinner too.

Skip the beach-road restaurants charging London prices for a taco, and go to Taqueria Honorio in town instead. You’ll hear about it from everyone, and for once the hype is dead right. These aren’t the precious, perfectly-plated, chi-chi tacos of the hotel zone. They’re the real thing: small, around 15 to 20 pesos each, packed with flavour, and some of the best-value eating in the whole town.

The cochinita pibil is the one to get, and the catch is timing: they open at 7am and close at 2pm, or whenever the food runs out, whichever comes first. So get there early. A plate of Honorio’s tacos for the price of a single beach-club coffee tells you everything about which Tulum is the real one.

So, Is Tulum Overrated?

Honestly? If you never leave the beach: yes, completely. You’ll pay a fortune to share a pretty stretch of sand with a thousand other people who all saw the same Instagram post, and you’ll leave wondering what the fuss was about.

But that was always a choice. Drive twenty minutes in any direction and Tulum becomes the place it’s supposed to be — a vast wild biosphere, thousand-year-old ruins with nobody in them, a mad art palace in the jungle, and tacos worth setting an alarm for. The overrated Tulum and the unforgettable one are the same town. The only difference is whether you got in the car.

Leave the playa. That’s the whole secret.