I will be staying at the Costa Maya Resort on AC in April and am concerned about how to get around. Costa Maya is 6 miles north of San Pedro. Can we rent a golf cart and get to all parts of the island? Are there restaurants near the resort? Will we have to take a ferry every time we want to go to town? What is cost/schedule? Also if anyone has stayed here would appreciate any information on the resort.

Razor -- you'll want to take the ferry to get into town -- golf cart to explore, but not as your primary transportation -- $5/person each way -- check and see when resort personnel go to/from town, can sometime catch a break

I'll allow others with more recent info to hit your other ?s

We stayed at Costa Maya Resort in February. I have posted photos of the resort in the trip report section of this message board. Needless to say, we will never stay there again for reasons I will not go into. Luckily we were on A.C. two weeks and for one of the weeks we stayed close to town.

That being said, it is a nice resort as far as the grounds are concerned and our room was very nice. There is nothing to do there but lay on the beach, sit at the pool or stare at the beautiful ocean, which is great if that's what you want. If you want to get away from everyone and everything, it's the perect location.

However, if you like activity, being busy or partying in the evenings and at night, you will be bored to tears. It's REALLY, REALLY quiet there. You should be able to keep busy during the day doing tours, though; however, they only offer each tour on a specific day and they do fill up. So if you miss a tour one day, it probably won't be offered again.

There is only 1 restaurant nearby but I forgot what it's called and you have to walk a ways to get to it. You will be stuck eating at Costa Maya's restaurant most of the time or cooking in your room.

Yes, if you want to go to town, you have to take a ferry. We had to pay $10 per person one-way, not $5. It runs every day and has several departure and return times starting mid-morning and going later into the evening. It comes and goes every hour and a half or so.

The resort does offer a shuttle 2 times a week for $5 each way, but it leaves at like 1:30 or somewhere in there and comes back around 5 or 5:30. Not a very flexible schedule.

They also have a complimentary shuttle on Saturday that goes to town but I don't remember the time it leaves and comes back. It's a pain trying to schedule everything around their shuttles and it never worked with our schedule so we always paid for the $10 one-way ferry. Maybe you'll have better luck.

A golf cart at Costa Maya is not feasible except for maybe one day for exploring. We did rent bikes one day and rode to town and spent the day in town. If you like biking, it's not bad at all. If you're out of shape, probably not a good idea.

Have fun!

Everything Pandl said, plus, if you stay up north, you do have to have a plan with the water Taxi schedule, and sometimes it's full and you have to wait for the next one.. or now they have opened the bridge, so you can travel to and fro at $5.00 each way..if you have a golf cart. The only way to aviod this extra expenditure is to stay in town in one of the places that you can walk to and from..you'll save money with no planning involved.Just My opinion.

The idea of going on vacation is not to be on a schedule. Most of the resorts up north rely on the Island Ferry which runs on two hour intervals. So you seem to live your vacation life in two hour increments. Miss a boat, by 30 seconds or 30 minutes, you wait for another two hours.

For those who want to get away from it all and on a budget (you get what you pay for) Costa Maya is a great choice, check out their promotions, very atractive.

Besides the entire transporation issue, the resort offers a good location for snorkeling at Mexico Rocks - directly in front.

Carts are impossible up there and beach walking is great (outside of Off season, as in the spray).

SIN

Pandl

Thanks sooooo much for the great info. I have had a hard time getting the resort to give me answers. Your pics are great. We will be on AC for a week and are not divers. Have zip lined in Costa Rica and loved it. Would also like to visit a ruin. Can you do Tikal in a day? Can anyone recommend ruins that can be seen on a day trip that doesn't take all day. Would you recommend going to the mainland and renting a car?

Lamanai is by far the best day trip, but it definitely an ALL DAY trip. A comfortable day trip is Xunantunich -- less stressful and easily combined with cave tubing for a fun but not too full day. You could easily rent a car and get to Xunantunich and tubing on your own -- the western highway is pretty easy to navigate, but I would recommend a worry free trip that includes everything from san Pedro, transportation, entrance fees, and lunch.

You really don't want to drive into Guatamala, you really can get a cab or a bus or someone else to drive you..it won't cost much!!