Nude Vacations in Mexico: Zipolite or Riviera Maya?

According to data from the World Tourism Organization, Mexico is the world’s 6th most visited country in the world. Unfortunately, there are no statistics about how many of these visitors are planning to spend their vacation without clothes, but we’re certain that this number is rising year after year.

While resorts that allow nudity in one form or another can be found in different places in the country, two specific areas stand out as nude vacation destinations: Zipolite and the Riviera Maya. Both are quite different in several ways, so in this blog post, we’ll help you choose which one might be perfect for you.

Most questions we receive about Mexico are safety-related. The country doesn’t have the best reputation as one of the world’s largest exporters of a variety of narcotics and gang wars related to this. Something important to realise is that Mexico is a huge country. As a reference, the distance from Tijuana in the north to Chetumal in the far south is roughly the same as Los Angeles to Miami or Madrid to Moscow.

In short, it’s hard to compare different parts of the country. There are places in Mexico that are not tourist-friendly at all, others where you’re better inside after dark, but also some that aren’t more dangerous than the average city in North America or Europe. Both Zipolite and the Riviera Maya are luckily in the last group. It is recommended to always keep an eye on your belongings and don’t wander around dodgy-looking neighbourhoods in the middle of the night, but that’s a general travel rule rather than something specific to Mexico.

Zipolite was just another fishing village as there are hundreds in the country, until it was discovered by hippies in the 1960s and 70s. Probably fueled by the lack of law enforcement and the availability of mind-altering substances, it became a haven for free spirits, who were also known to not care much about what people decide to wear or not wear.

Many years later, when most hippies had already cut their hair and sold their bongs, the free-spirited nude-friendly vibe of the town remained. After a congress of the Latin American Naturist Commission in 2016 in Zipolite, the beach was recognised by the authorities as Mexico’s first official nude beach. As a result, many new local businesses opened their doors to cater specifically to naked guests.

On the other coast, if the name “Riviera Maya” doesn’t ring a bell, you’ve probably heard about Cancun. This is the region’s capital city and is often mistaken for the whole area. We’ve heard many people say they’ve been on holiday to Cancun, while they actually stayed in Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos, or Tulum. Anyway, Cancun was a planned city which was supposed to become one of the Caribbean’s major tourist centres. And it did.

Only an hour or two down the road from Cancun, a small village called Tulum was seeing a similar type of visitor as Zipolite, hippies and backpackers looking for a relaxed and cheap place on the beach. Clothes were generally regarded as optional. But that didn’t last for long, as tourism in Cancun started exploding, the hotel zone expanded along the coast and soaked up every town on its way. Today, Tulum has become a city where people go to see and be seen, rather than one to share nudity.

At first sight, nudity is generally more accepted in Zipolite than it is in the Riviera Maya. The latter has no official nude beaches and although there are a few spots on Mexico’s Caribbean coast where you can sunbathe naked, these are often part of a resort, far away from everything, and/or attracting curious or shocked eyes. This is what mass tourism does to a place, when we looked for potential nude beaches in the Riviera Maya, long-time locals often couldn’t care less, but the other tourists had no idea what they saw. Nudity in the Riviera Maya is mostly something for private resorts.

Zipolite is a lot more relaxed and every person who visits the town and does only a bit of research knows that they may see naked people at one point or another. This general acceptance has its downside too. More and more, we see Zipolite being promoted as a naked village, putting it in the same row as Cap d’Agde, Vera Playa, and Charco del Palo. However, that is not the case. Walking naked around town is considered disrespectful towards the local community and the only places where you should be naked are the beach, your clothing-optional resort, or at any of the beach bars that allow nudity.

Something we’d really like to see one day are statistics of the areas in the world with the highest density of clothes-free resorts because we think that Zipolite might be number one. For a town with just a handful of streets, there are about 15 hotels with a clothing-optional or clothes-free policy. Most of them are of the hostel, guesthouse or boutique hotel type, the largest having no more than 25 or 30 rooms.

At the Riviera Maya, the choice is less but also very different. The best-known name is Hidden Beach Resort, one of the world’s few all-nude all-inclusive resorts. Then there’s Intima Resort which is a luxury clothing-optional apartment hotel and in the very south is Playa Sonrisa which offers bungalow-style accommodation right on its private nude beach.

If accommodation price is a determining factor it’s interesting to know that the most expensive room in a clothing-optional place in Zipolite will still be cheaper than the cheapest room in the Riviera Maya. But it’s also important to mention that at the Riviera Maya, you’re not just renting a room, you’re buying an experience.

One of the main reasons why tourism in Cancun boomed during the last decades of the previous century was because they sold experiences. Full packages including accommodation, food, drinks, and excursions. Everything is taken care of, from the moment you step off the plane until the time when you board it again, days later with watery eyes (whether that’s because of sentiment, lack of sleep, or alcohol is something we’ll leave in the middle).

Only recently, this started to reflect on nude tourism as well. Nude boat tours, nude snorkelling, and nude tours of cenotes (underground lakes) are already available and we wouldn’t be surprised if this offer keeps extending.

As avid backpackers, one of the things we always loved about Zipolite was its lack of package tours. It was a “figure it out yourself” kind of destination. The very first time we visited, we don’t recall that there was an airport taxi service. You just had to ask around in basic Spanish until someone pointed you to a bus that would bring you to another bus that would drop you off at a spot where you needed to wait for a truck.

Those days are long gone. Zipolite will probably never become an “experience” destination, but the owner of the hotel you’ve booked will help you organise transportation upfront and any excursion can now be done in the comfort of a taxi instead of in the back of a truck. Even nude excursions seem to be taking off with naked boat trips to watch dolphins and whales.

One huge advantage of the Riviera Maya is the airport of Cancun. It’s one of our favourite airports in the world because it’s very convenient and has connections to anywhere in Europe or the Americas. No layovers, no hassle. With the new Maya Train and a new airport in Tulum, even more remote places like Playa Sonrisa are becoming easier than ever to access.

While Zipolite has two airports both within an hour’s drive from town, getting there can be a real struggle. Although the airport of Puerto Escondido is called an international one, we still need to find its first international flight. More popular is the airport of Huatulco, but unless you’re coming from Dallas, Calgary, Toronto, or Vancouver and are travelling between December and March, you will need a layover.

Most likely, your layover will happen in the Benito Juárez airport in Mexico City, one of our least favourite airports in the world because it’s confusing, expensive, and somehow they manage to make none of their flights really connecting. Often resulting in an overnight stay in some airport hotel. Sorry, whenever we think of this airport we can’t help but rant about it. Of course, Zipolite is more than worth it and you’ll forget about all this the moment you get to town.

So which one is better for you?

5 Reasons why you should visit Zipolite:

✅ You like a laidback vibe and a live-and-let-live kind of environment

✅ You want to get the most out of your money

✅ You love nude beaches

✅ You don’t like mass tourism

✅ You’re a hippy

5 Reasons why you should visit the Riviera Maya:

✅ You like to have everything arranged for you

✅ You consider a hotel more than a place to stay

✅ You like lots of excursions

✅ You don’t like long travel times

✅ You think room service is important