What you can see on the Tulum beach cam
The view is simple and wide: pale sand, then the sea, turquoise in the shallows and a deep blue beyond. It shows the waves, the wind and the light at a glance, and whether seaweed has reached the sand.
Tulum beach from Casa Malca
This camera sits low on the beach in front of a hotel on the Tulum beach road and looks straight out to sea. Most of the picture is open sand, smooth and pale, then a line of surf and the Caribbean running to a flat horizon under a wide sky. On the right stands a white beach cabana with a fabric roof, labeled "Beach cam".
With nothing between the lens and the sea, it shows the size of the waves and the state of the sand very clearly, including any sargassum that has arrived. Casa Malca streams it through ipcamlive, with its logo in the corner.
The city of dawn and its national park
The Maya city of Tulum stands on limestone cliffs about 12 meters (39 feet) above the sea, a few kilometers north of this beach. It was built and lived in between about 1200 and 1450 CE, walled on three sides, and was a busy port for coastal and inland trade. Its old name is believed to have been Zama, often translated as "dawn", fitting for a city that faces the sunrise. In 1981 Mexico declared the land around it a national park of about 660 hectares (1,640 acres), protecting the ruins, the forest and beaches where sea turtles nest. From the ruins, the beach road runs south through the hotel zone to the entrance of the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.
When to watch Tulum beach
This beach shares the dawn that may have given the old city its name: the sun comes up out of the sea right in front of the cam, and that is the moment to watch. Around midday the sun is high enough for the shallows to show their brightest turquoise. The width of the sand is the other thing to look at: after storms the sea can eat into it, and the cam shows how much beach there is from one week to the next.
Nearby
The town of Tulum is a few kilometers inland. The forest around it hides well-known cenotes, entrances to the vast flooded caves beneath this coast. Cobá, an older and much larger Maya city, lies about 47 km (29 miles) to the northwest.
Getting there
The sand is public, though in the hotel zone most ways onto it pass through hotels and beach clubs. Tulum has its own international airport and a station on the Tren Maya. From May to October turtles nest on these beaches: keep away from marked nests and keep lights off the sand at night.
