Puerto Aventuras and its place in the story of the Riviera Maya

Drive from Playa del Carmen to Tulum and you will pass Puerto Aventuras without seeing it. It sits on the left of the highway, behind a gate, and from outside there is no sign that inside there is a marina holding hundreds of boats.

What almost nobody knows is that the marina was not there. It was dug.

The development was founded by Román Rivera Torres. He bought around 320 hectares across seven parcels and, in October 1987, began cutting canals into the limestone to connect them to the sea.

The permit he used was not for a marina. It was a quarry permit, for extracting stone. The rock that came out of the hole was used to build.

What today reads as a natural inlet full of yachts is a machine cut into the rock of the peninsula.

Here is a part that gets told often, and it is worth saying where it comes from.

According to the founder himself, the canals were dug but still separated from the sea by a plug of rock, and it was Hurricane Gilbert, in September 1988, that broke through that last stretch and opened the marina.

He is the one who tells it. We found no independent record confirming it. It stands as the founder's account, which is a legitimate way to know something, just a different one from a document.

The Puerto Aventuras course opened in 1991, three years before the one at Playacar. Its own site describes it as a 9-hole par 36 course designed by PGA player Thomas Lehman, and presents it as the first golf course in the Riviera Maya.

You can play a single or a double round. It does not publish rates online, so you have to ask directly.

This is the best story in the place and almost nobody knows it.

Inside Puerto Aventuras is the Museo de Rescates Subacuáticos, which Mexico's Ministry of Culture records as opened in 1988. It holds pieces recovered from Caribbean shipwrecks, among them objects from El Matancero, plus old diving equipment and archaeological pieces from Xel-Há.

Behind it is Pablo Bush Romero, who founded CEDAM in 1959, the exploration and water sports club that carried out that recovery, and who later founded Akumal. So a good part of what is now the tourist Riviera Maya started with a group of divers looking for wrecks.

One thing to check before you go: the museum's current status is unclear. Official listings still publish its hours and there are reviews saying it is gone. If that is what you are going for, ask first.

A habitat with dolphins, manatees and sea lions operates in the marina.

Since July 17, 2025, an amendment to Mexico's General Wildlife Law, known as the Ley Mincho, has been in force. It prohibits the use of marine mammals in shows, recreational activities and any for-profit use, even where prior authorizations exist.

Animals already held may remain under existing management plans, but those authorizations are not renewed or extended.

If you were planning on a show or a swim with dolphins, the law has changed. It is worth asking directly what is possible today.

This is the fact that says the most about the place.

The town of Puerto Aventuras had 22,878 residents in the 2020 census. Fewer than one in ten lives inside the tourist development. The rest live in Puerto Maya and the support town, on the other side of Highway 307.

The founder had planned it for three thousand people.

It is the same story as the rest of the coast: the tourist development gets a master plan, and the town that makes it run grows on its own, next door, without one.

Puerto Aventuras also has an administrative quirk. It belonged to the municipality of Cozumel until 1993, then to Solidaridad, and since 2022 it has been an alcaldía, meaning it has its own local authority inside the municipality.

Getting in is not automatic. Puerto Aventuras is a private development with a gate, and access has been disputed between the trust and the homeowners' association.

If you are heading to a restaurant, hotel or business inside, the practical move is to contact them beforehand and ask how to get in.

A still-water marina with boats of every size, restaurants and shops around it, a nine-hole course, the development's beaches, and a shipwreck museum whose hours are worth confirming.

And the knowledge that none of it was there forty years ago, not even the water.

Dates and facts about the development come from official records, Mexican press and the operator's own site. The hurricane story comes from the founder's account. The museum's status is in conflict between sources and is flagged as such.

On the golf course, the operator's page sits at amber under this site's source rule: puertoaventuras.com loads, it is theirs and it says the same thing in both its languages, but it publishes no rates, both of its events pages are empty and it carries no date signal. We publish what it says, and we say we cannot date when it said it.