Anyone who has been to Cancun and Playa del Carmen in the past couple years has witnessed first-hand the effects of overbuilding, reef degradation, and multiple hurricane hits. Some of this is just natural beach erosion, some of it has been hastened by dumb building and environmental practices.

After lots of promises, the local governments have put beach restoration in high gear though. They already dumped multiple tons of sand on Cancun’s beaches and you can see the effects here in this quickie video from the Cancun Tourism board.

The trucks will soon go to work in Playa del Carmen as well, with beach widening going on for a 2.7-mile stretch. I’m assuming that includes the Playacar resort area as the beaches north of Playa del Carmen are not in such bad shape. Some small craft docks are going up in the center as well, giving boats a place to tie up so they don’t have to be dragged on and off the beach every time. There’s nothing much that can be done now about the wall of concrete too close to the shore, but I guess they can do this all over again in a few years if another hurricane comes.

UPDATE – Here’s a nice before and after shot in front of the Ritz-Carlton Cancun

See detailed reviews of the best luxury hotels in Cancun and Playa del Carmen

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Mexico, Mexico Hotels, Ritz-Carlton, Travel industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.