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cozumel
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Tourists
visit Cozumel for tropical beaches, clear water, saltwater
sportfishing and scuba diving.
Cozumel is an island off the eastern coast of the Yucatan
Peninsula of Mexico, opposite Playa del Carmen. It is one
of the eight municipalities of the Mexican state of Quintana
Roo. Cozumel is a popular tourist destination renowned for
its scuba diving. The main town on the island is San Miguel.
The island is about 48 km (30 mi) north-south and 16 km (10
mi) east-west, and is the largest island of Mexico. It is
about 20 km (12 mi) from the mainland, and some 60 km (36
mi) south of Cancún. Nearly everybody in Cozumel lives
in the town of San Miguel (pop. est. 90,000 in 2003), which
is on the western shore. The rest of the island is low, flat,
and densely vegetated.
The Maya are believed to have first settled Cozumel by the
early part of the 1st millennium AD, and older Preclassic
Olmec artifacts have been found on the island as well. The
island was sacred to Ix Chel, the Maya Moon Goddess, and the
temples here were a place of pilgrimage, especially by women
desiring fertility. There are a number of ruins on the island,
most from the Post-Classic period. The largest Maya ruins
on the island were bulldozed to make way for a airplane runway
during World War II. The first Spanish visitor was Juan de
Grijalva in 1518, and in the following year Hernán
Cortés came with a fleet and destroyed many Maya temples.
Some 40,000 Mayans lived on the island then, but smallpox
devastated them and by 1570 only 30 were left alive. In the
ensuing years Cozumel was nearly deserted, used as a hideout
by pirates from time to time. In 1848, the Caste War of Yucatán
resulted in resettlement by refugees escaping the tumult.
In the 1960s, Jacques Cousteau discovered the extent and beauty
of the coral reefs around Cozumel and publicized it as one
of the best places to go scuba diving in the world.
In the late 1970s a much enlarged airport was built, capable
of handling jet aircraft and international flights. This resulted
in much greater tourism to Cozumel.
Diving is still a primary draw, but Cozumel built a deepwater
pier in the 1990s (causing some damage to the reefs) so that
cruise ships could easily dock there, and it is now a regular
stop on cruises in the Caribbean.
cozumal, cozemal, cozamal, cozemel, cozamel
See:
• Scuba
This article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Cozumel".
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