Frommers List of Best Vacation Destinations

This coming winter, you could, of course, go to one of the standard Caribbean or Mexican resorts: Aruba, San Juan, Cancun, St. Thomas. And there you’d vacation with hordes of fellow sun-worshippers, in easy reach of flashy shopping malls with products bearing the most familiar names. Or you could go to the less-visited destinations with fewer crowds, a general absence of casinos, less emphasis on shopping, beaches just as inviting and local populations that still smile at tourists and appreciate their presence. Here are a few.

Riviera Maya

The Mayan Riviera just barely makes the list of attractive lures; its northernmost outpost, the giant Cancun, is as urbanized as any and receives more tourist visitors than any other resort area of Mexico. But south of the famous hotel zone of Cancun, with its dozens of resort properties, the beaches are just as spectacular, the water as warm and the hotels fairly well-spaced from each other.

Each is an all-inclusive resort from whose grounds you will rarely escape. It’s the only drawback, but they supply unbeatable value to the person willing to confine a Mexican vacation to the expansive premises of a sprawling establishment.

At a big, modern property called Secrets Maroma, at which I stayed a few years ago, a single, flat expenditure for the stay enabled me to eat in any one of nine excellent ethnic restaurants, ordering as many cocktails or glasses of wine as I wished, to lounge about in seven bars with unlimited drinks and to enjoy a number of programs for sea sports and evening entertainment. There are a couple of dozen properties similar to that, and all are within striking distance of the famous Mayan ruins at Tulum.