The two sides

Mayakoba means village over the water, and the name does most of the explaining. Four resorts share a stretch of Riviera Maya coast threaded with man-made canals cut through mangrove, and the whole complex is built around water rather than beside it. Banyan Tree is the one that leaned hardest into the setting. Every accommodation is a villa. Every villa has a private pool. That flattens most of the usual decisions and leaves one that actually matters: sand or jungle.

The footprint splits cleanly. A relatively small number of suites and villas sit directly on the beach. The much larger share sits inland along the lagoon, tucked into mangrove and jungle, connected by paths you ride rather than walk. They are not lesser and greater versions of the same room. They are different holidays that happen to share a spa.

The beachfront suites are honeymoon suites in all but name: luxury one-bedrooms with a wall of glass between the bed and the Caribbean, a private plunge pool on the deck, and the bed aimed so the sea is the first thing you see. Remote-controlled blinds handle the mornings you would rather not. They are cream of the crop and very tastefully done — restrained where this coast tends to gild.

What the beach side buys is immediacy: coffee on the sand in a dressing gown, the beachfront grill working next door, the pool kept for adults a few steps beyond it, and no logistics between you and the water. What it is not for is children. A room this romantic is wasted on anyone whose main interest in a plunge pool is the cannonball. This side is for honeymoons and for lovers — the jungle will give a family far more back.

Inland, the villas sit in the mangrove with the lagoon at the door. The Deluxe Pool Villas are the volume category and the most common room on the property; above them are versions with separate living rooms, Spa Pool Villas with their own massage porch, and the newest category, rooftop pool villas with a private heated infinity pool and a full seating deck upstairs. The setting is the point. It is also where children belong: more room, more to watch, and none of what makes the beachfront suites special is anything a child will notice.

Birds, turtles, coatis, and crocodiles the resort tracks and relocates when they get large; you can kayak the canals past cenote entrances into the underground river, and my guide pointed out a crocodile on the way. He was very calm about it. I have decided he was right to be. From a lagoon villa you are inside the preserve rather than looking at it. The trade is distance: bike, walk or call a buggy to reach the beach, which is trivial on day one and, by day four with a toddler and wet towels, is not.

Side by side

	Beachfront	Jungle and lagoon
Wake up to	Caribbean, direct	Mangrove, birds, water
Private pool	Yes, a plunge pool on the deck	Yes; some with a rooftop infinity pool
Beach access	Immediate	Bike or buggy, a few minutes
Wildlife	Minimal	Constant
Insects	The sea breeze helps	Repellent in the warm months
Sargassum	You see it from bed	You choose when to see it
Best for	Honeymoons, anniversaries, lovers’ retreats	Children, families, longer stays, repeat visits

The obvious assumption is that beachfront sits at the top of the ladder. Here it does not, quite: the newest lagoon category opened above the beachfront suites, and that tells you what the property thinks it is selling. The beach is a Riviera Maya commodity, available at a hundred resorts along this coast. The mangrove is not.

What both sides share

The spa is the reason the Banyan Tree name carries weight in Asia, and the Mayakoba outpost holds up. Treatment cabins sit over the water, large enough that I mistook the first one for a guest villa, and the hydrotherapy pools, steam rooms and treatment range are the strongest single amenity on the property.

Dining runs deep. Saffron is the signature, Thai food served on decks suspended over the lagoon, and it stands with the best Thai kitchens I have eaten in on this side of the Atlantic. Oriente handles all-day dining and a breakfast buffet worth getting up for; Cello covers Italian; the beach club sits on the beachfront pool; Tomahawk does open-fire Latin grill; there is a burger shop and a kosher restaurant besides. The one to book first is HAAB, an open-air Mayan dinner cooked over fire in the jungle, with a Mayan host talking you through it and dancers in traditional body paint. It is the meal I still describe to people months later.

The villas come with bicycles, and the flat terrain makes them the sensible way to move; golf carts run you to the main building for meals when the evening calls for real shoes. The cart to dinner starts as a courtesy and ends as a lifestyle. Room keys open the restaurants at Rosewood, Fairmont and Andaz next door, which effectively triples the dining options, and El Pueblito, the small village inside the complex, has shops, a chapel and its own cenote. Food and drink are a full-dress resort operation, and the quality holds, which is not always true in this region.

Which to book, by trip

Summer, May to October: a lagoon villa, and that argument alone should decide it. Seaweed washes onto the Caribbean-facing beaches along this coast seasonally, the resort rakes and manages it, and some weeks are fine; but a beachfront villa in August is a room with a view of whatever the tide brought, with no version of the stay where you can look somewhere else. A lagoon villa has a mangrove view that is never affected and a beach you visit on the days it looks good. I went in April and found the beach clear, which is luck rather than planning.

A honeymoon, an anniversary, a trip the children sat out: the beachfront suite, and do not overthink it — that is what it is built for. Travelling with children: the jungle side, where the canals and the coatis do half the entertaining and nothing about the room is wasted on them. A longer stay or a return visit: the lagoon, in the volume category unless the private rooftop is truly what you want. Pack repellent regardless of which side you land on; outdoor dining needs it in the warm months and the decks at Saffron are the worst of it. Reserve HAAB and Saffron before arrival. Take the bikes seriously as transport, and the golf carts to dinner. And leave one evening free for a meal at a neighbouring resort, because the room key that opens Rosewood’s restaurants is one of the best things about staying anywhere inside Mayakoba.

Look elsewhere if you want everything within thirty steps. The villa density that gives you privacy also means the gym, the lobby, the spa and the beach are all a ride from each other.

The beach is a Riviera Maya commodity. The mangrove is not.

See the full set: Banyan Tree, Mayakoba — in frames. More Mayakoba: the Mayakoba set.