Three of Cancún’s public beaches Playa Delfines, Playa Chac Mool and Playa Las Perlas now have the prized international Blue Flag for their exceptional water and sand quality, hygiene and services. Cancún is the first place in Mexico to receive this distinction and several more beaches are possible candidates for the next round of inspections in November.

We reported recently on the success of Xcaret’s scarlet macaw breeding program and the 73 birds that have been released into the wild to date and fly free in the jungle around the ancient Mayan city of Palenque in Chiapas. The Riviera Maya park has now extended its program to the tropical forests of southern Veracruz where macaws were once widespread but became extinct in the 1970s.