Shop organic on your Cancun vacation. By purchasing local products such as honey, salsas, organic coffee or chocolate on your Mexican Caribbean vacation you can help support sustainable development in the region’s rural communities. The Royal Market has a new sustainable product on sale for you to try: Pitahi pitahaya (dragon fruit) and papaya jam made in the Zona Maya, central Quintana Roo.

The preserves are made by a group of enterprising women who founded the Ulu Umil Beh cooperative in the Mayan village of Chumpon.

Chumpon and the neighboring villages of Chun-on and Chun-ya harvest 150 tons of dragon fruit a year and the women decided to make jam from the surplus fruit as a way of boosting income and employment opportunities in their community.

The Royal Market also stocks organic honey produced by beekeepers in the Yucatan, organic coffee from Chiapas, Oaxaca and Veracruz, chocolate and salsas.