Association football
Association football, more known as football or soccer, is a team sport played with a spherical ball between two teams of eleven players. It is played by 250 million players in over 200 countries and dependencies, making it the world's most popular sport; the game is played on a rectangular field called a pitch with a goal at each end. The object of the game is to score by moving the ball beyond the goal line into the opposing goal. Association football is one of a family of football codes, which emerged from various ball games played worldwide since antiquity; the modern game traces its origins to 1863 when the Laws of the Game were codified in England by The Football Association. Players are not allowed to touch the ball with hands or arms while it is in play, except for the goalkeepers within the penalty area. Other players use their feet to strike or pass the ball, but may use any other part of their body except the hands and the arms; the team that scores most goals by the end of the match wins.
If the score is level at the end of the game, either a draw is declared or the game goes into extra time or a penalty shootout depending on the format of the competition. Association football is governed internationally by the International Federation of Association Football, which organises World Cups for both men and women every four years; the rules of association football were codified in England by the Football Association in 1863 and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other forms of football played at the time rugby football. The first written "reference to the inflated ball used in the game" was in the mid-14th century: "Þe heued fro þe body went, Als it were a foteballe"; the Online Etymology Dictionary states that the "rules of the game" were made in 1848, before the "split off in 1863". The term soccer comes from a slang or jocular abbreviation of the word "association", with the suffix "-er" appended to it; the word soccer was first recorded in 1889 in the earlier form of socca.
Within the English-speaking world, association football is now called "football" in the United Kingdom and "soccer" in Canada and the United States. People in countries where other codes of football are prevalent may use either term, although national associations in Australia and New Zealand now use "football" for the formal name. According to FIFA, the Chinese competitive game cuju is the earliest form of football for which there is evidence. Cuju players could use any part of the body apart from hands and the intent was kicking a ball through an opening into a net, it was remarkably similar to modern football. During the Han Dynasty, cuju games were standardised and rules were established. Phaininda and episkyros were Greek ball games. An image of an episkyros player depicted in low relief on a vase at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens appears on the UEFA European Championship Cup. Athenaeus, writing in 228 AD, referenced the Roman ball game harpastum. Phaininda and harpastum were played involving hands and violence.
They all appear to have resembled rugby football and volleyball more than what is recognizable as modern football. As with pre-codified "mob football", the antecedent of all modern football codes, these three games involved more handling the ball than kicking. Other games included kemari in chuk-guk in Korea. Association football in itself does not have a classical history. Notwithstanding any similarities to other ball games played around the world FIFA has recognised that no historical connection exists with any game played in antiquity outside Europe; the modern rules of association football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardise the varying forms of football played in the public schools of England. The history of football in England dates back to at least the eighth century AD; the Cambridge Rules, first drawn up at Cambridge University in 1848, were influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association football. The Cambridge Rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Rugby and Shrewsbury schools.
They were not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various forms of football; some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club, formed by former public school pupils in 1857, which led to formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School devised an influential set of rules; these ongoing efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association in 1863, which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, London. The only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse; the Freemason's Tavern was the setting for five more meetings between October and December, which produced the first comprehensive set of rules. At the final meeting, the first FA treasurer, the representative from Blackheath, withdrew his club from the FA over the removal of two draft rules at the previous meeting: the first allowed for running with the ball in hand.
Other English rugby clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA and instead in 1871 formed the Rugby Football Union. The eleven remaining clubs, under
David Guetta
Pierre David Guetta is a French DJ, record producer and songwriter. He has sold over thirty million singles worldwide. In 2011, Guetta was voted as the number one DJ in the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs poll. In 2013, Billboard crowned "When Love Takes Over" as the number one dance-pop collaboration of all time. Born and raised in Paris, he released his first album, Just a Little More Love, in 2002, he released Guetta Blaster and Pop Life. Guetta achieved mainstream success with his 2009 album One Love which included the hit singles "When Love Takes Over", "Gettin' Over You", "Sexy Bitch" and "Memories", the first three of which reached number one in the United Kingdom; the 2011 follow-up album, Nothing but the Beat, continued this success, containing the hit singles "Where Them Girls At", "Little Bad Girl", "Without You", "Titanium" and "Turn Me On". He is among the first DJs to get into the electronic dance music scene and is known as the "grandfather of EDM". Pierre David Guetta was born in France. Guetta's father Pierre Guetta, was a Franco-Italian sociologist from a Moroccan Jewish family.
His mother is of Belgian descent. Through his father, David Guetta is the younger half-brother of the prominent French journalist Bernard Guetta and of the Franco-Italian actress Nathalie Guetta. Guetta began to DJ at the Broad Club in Paris, he first played popular songs, he discovered house music when he heard a Farley "Jackmaster" Funk track on French radio in 1987. The next year, he began hosting his own club nights. In 1990, he released "Nation Rap", a hip-hop collaboration with French rapper Sidney Duteil. In the mid-1990s Guetta played in clubs including Le Centrale, the Rex, Le Boy, Folies Pigalle. Released in 1994 Guetta's second single, a collaboration with American house vocalist Robert Owens titled "Up & Away", was a minor club hit. In 1994, Guetta became the manager of Le Palace nightclub and he continued to organise parties there and in other clubs, such as the "Scream" parties in Les Bains Douches. In 2001, Guetta along with Joachim Garraud founded Gum Productions, in the same year Guetta's first hit single, "Just a Little More Love", featuring American singer Chris Willis was released.
Willis was vacationing in France. Guetta's debut album Just a Little More Love was released in 2002 on Virgin Records and sold over 300,000 copies; the follow-up singles, were released in 2002. Guetta released F*ck Me I'm Famous, in 2003, named after his party in Ibiza, it included "Just for One Day", a remix of David Bowie's song "Heroes". In his career, Guetta continued recording compilations under that title. Guetta's second album, Guetta Blaster, was released in 2004, it released four singles: "Money" and "Stay" featuring Chris Willis and "The World Is Mine" and "In Love With Myself" featuring JD Davis. In 2006 the Just a Little More Love single "Love Don't Let Me Go" was re-released as a mash-up with the Tocadisco remix of "Walking Away" by The Egg; the mash-up single entitled "Love Don't Let Me Go" was charted higher than the original release of the song. In 2007, Guetta's third album Pop Life was released; the album was successful in the Ireland as well as in mainland Europe. According to EMI in 2010, the album has sold a total of 530,000 copies worldwide.
The lead single "Love Is Gone" reached Number 1 on the American Dance Chart and charted on the Billboard Hot 100. "Delirious" featured the vocals of Tara McDonald who co wrote the record. The song was released as the album's fourth single on 31 January 2008; the song charted # 2 Belgian singles chart. #12 Dutch singles chart, #16 French singles chart, #16 Swiss singles chart, #36 Hungary singles chart, #29 Romanian singles chart, #51 Swedish singles chart. The remixes of the song, including mixes by Fred Rister, Marc Mysterio, Laidback Luke, Arno Cost and Norman Doray were released. A video clip for the song was filmed by Denys Thibaut in Montreal, featuring Guetta and Tara McDonald, picturing an executive assistant throwing paint all over her boss's office. McDonald sang and co wrote "You're Not Alone" from this album, he has played in many countries around the world to promote the album. He played in Mauritius in January 2008. In the same year, he and his wife Cathy planned a new event which took place in the Stade de France on 5 July 2008.
The event was called "UNIGHTED", he performed with Tiësto, Carl Cox, Joachim Garraud and Martin Solveig in front of a crowd of 40,000. In 2009, he was placed third in the "Top 100 DJs" poll by DJ Magazine, was elected "Best House DJ" by DJ Awards in 2008. Since April 2009, Guetta had his own radio show on the internet radio station RauteMusik on Saturday evening; the show was afterwards moved into Radio 538, being aired every Friday evening after Tiësto's Club Life. Guetta's fourth studio album, One Love, was released in August 2009, its first single "When Love Takes Over", which featured Kelly Rowland, peaked at #1 on the UK Singles Chart and topped many other countries worldwide, selling over 5,5 million copies worldwide. His second single from the album, "Sexy Bitch" featuring Akon, became his second #1 in the UK. "One Love" featuring Estelle, "Memories" featuring Kid Cudi and "Gettin' Over You" featuring Chris Willis, Fergie and LMFAO followed. As of May 2011 the album had sold three million copies worldwide.
Guetta's fourth studio album One Love was nominated as "Best Electronic/Dance Album" at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards. His song "When Love Takes Over" featuring American R&B singer Kelly Rowland receiv
Cenote
A cenote is a natural pit, or sinkhole, resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath. Associated with the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, cenotes were sometimes used by the ancient Maya for sacrificial offerings; the term derives from a word used by the low-land Yucatec Maya—ts'onot—to refer to any location with accessible groundwater. Cenotes are common geological forms in low latitude regions on islands and platforms with young post-Paleozoic limestones that have little soil development. Cenotes are surface connections to subterranean water bodies. While the best-known cenotes are large open water pools measuring tens of meters in diameter, such as those at Chichén Itzá in Mexico, the greatest number of cenotes are smaller sheltered sites and do not have any surface exposed water. There are over 6000 different cenotes in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico alone; the term cenote has been used to describe similar karst features in other countries such as Cuba and Australia, in addition to the more generic term of sinkholes.
Cenote water is very clear, as the water comes from rain water filtering through the ground, therefore contains little suspended particulate matter. The groundwater flow rate within a cenote may be slow. In many cases, cenotes are areas where sections of cave roof have collapsed revealing an underlying cave system, the water flow rates may be much faster: up to 10 kilometers per day. Cenotes around the world attract cavern and cave divers who have documented extensive flooded cave systems through them, some of which have been explored for lengths of 340 km or more. Cenotes are formed by dissolution of rock and the resulting subsurface void, which may or may not be linked to an active cave system, the subsequent structural collapse. Rock that falls into the water below is removed by further dissolution, creating space for more collapse blocks; the rate of collapse increases during periods when the water table is below the ceiling of the void, since the rock ceiling is no longer buoyantly supported by the water in the void.
Cenotes may be collapsed creating an open water pool, or collapsed with some portion of a rock overhanging above the water. The stereotypical cenotes resemble small circular ponds, measuring some tens of meters in diameter with sheer drops at the edges. Most cenotes, require some degree of stooping or crawling to access the water. In the north and northwest of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, the cenotes overlie vertically extensive voids penetrating 50 to 100 m below the modern water table; however few of these cenotes appear to be connected with horizontally extensive underground river systems, with water flow through them being more dominated by aquifer matrix and fracture flows. In contrast, the cenotes along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula provide access to extensive underwater cave systems, such as Sistema Ox Bel Ha, Sistema Sac Actun/Sistema Nohoch Nah Chich and Sistema Dos Ojos; the Yucatán Peninsula contains a vast coastal aquifer system, density-stratified. The infiltrating meteoric water floats on top of higher-density saline water intruding from the coastal margins.
The whole aquifer is therefore an anchialine system. Where a cenote, or the flooded cave to which it is an opening, provides deep enough access into the aquifer, the interface between the fresh and saline water may be reached; the density interface between the fresh and saline waters is a halocline, which means a sharp change in salt concentration over a small change in depth. Mixing of the fresh and saline water results in a blurry swirling effect caused by refraction between the different densities of fresh and saline waters; the depth of the halocline is a function of several factors: climate and how much meteoric water recharges the aquifer, hydraulic conductivity of the host rock and connectivity of existing cave systems and how effective these are at draining water to the coast, the distance from the coast. In general, the halocline is deeper further from the coast, in the Yucatán Peninsula this depth is 10 to 20 m below the water table at the coast, 50 to 100 m below the water table in the middle of the peninsula, with saline water underlying the whole of the peninsula.
In 1936, a simple morphometry-based classification system for cenotes was presented. Cenotes-cántaro are those with a surface connection narrower than the diameter of the water body; the classification scheme was based on morphometric observations above the water table, therefore incompletely reflects the processes by which the cenotes formed and the inherent hydrogeochemical relationship with the underlying flooded cave networks, which were only discovered in the 1980s and with the initiation of cave diving exploration. Flora and fauna are scarcer than in the open ocean, however marine animals do thrive in caves. In caverns, one can spot mojarras, guppies, cat-fish, small eels and frogs. In the most secluded and darker cenotes, the fauna has evolved special features to live in an environment deprived of natural light. For example, many animals don't have pigmentation and they are blind, so they are equipped with long feelers so that they can find food and make
Mexico
Mexico the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States. Covering 2,000,000 square kilometres, the nation is the fifth largest country in the Americas by total area and the 13th largest independent state in the world. With an estimated population of over 120 million people, the country is the eleventh most populous state and the most populous Spanish-speaking state in the world, while being the second most populous nation in Latin America after Brazil. Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and Mexico City, a special federal entity, the capital city and its most populous city. Other metropolises in the state include Guadalajara, Puebla, Tijuana and León. Pre-Columbian Mexico dates to about 8000 BC and is identified as one of five cradles of civilization and was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Olmec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its politically powerful base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, administered as the viceroyalty of New Spain.
Three centuries the territory became a nation state following its recognition in 1821 after the Mexican War of Independence. The post-independence period was tumultuous, characterized by economic inequality and many contrasting political changes; the Mexican–American War led to a territorial cession of the extant northern territories to the United States. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, two empires, the Porfiriato occurred in the 19th century; the Porfiriato was ended by the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the country's current political system as a federal, democratic republic. Mexico has the 11th largest by purchasing power parity; the Mexican economy is linked to those of its 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement partners the United States. In 1994, Mexico became the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts.
The country is considered both a regional power and a middle power, is identified as an emerging global power. Due to its rich culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas and seventh in the world for number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Mexico is an ecologically megadiverse country, ranking fourth in the world for its biodiversity. Mexico receives a huge number of tourists every year: in 2018, it was the sixth most-visited country in the world, with 39 million international arrivals. Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus group of the UN, the Pacific Alliance trade bloc. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely the Valley of Mexico and surrounding territories, with its people being known as the Mexica, it is believed to be a toponym for the valley which became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result, although it could have been the other way around.
In the colonial era, back when Mexico was called New Spain this territory became the Intendency of Mexico and after New Spain achieved independence from the Spanish Empire it came to be known as the State of Mexico with the new country being named after its capital: the City of Mexico, which itself was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Traditionally, the name Tenochtitlan was thought to come from Nahuatl tetl and nōchtli and is thought to mean "Among the prickly pears rocks". However, one attestation in the late 16th-century manuscript known as "the Bancroft dialogues" suggests the second vowel was short, so that the true etymology remains uncertain; the suffix -co is the Nahuatl locative, making the word a place name. Beyond that, the etymology is uncertain, it has been suggested that it is derived from Mextli or Mēxihtli, a secret name for the god of war and patron of the Mexica, Huitzilopochtli, in which case Mēxihco means "place where Huitzilopochtli lives".
Another hypothesis suggests that Mēxihco derives from a portmanteau of the Nahuatl words for "moon" and navel. This meaning might refer to Tenochtitlan's position in the middle of Lake Texcoco; the system of interconnected lakes, of which Texcoco formed the center, had the form of a rabbit, which the Mesoamericans pareidolically associated with the moon rabbit. Still another hypothesis suggests that the word is derived from Mēctli, the name of the goddess of maguey; the name of the city-state was transliterated to Spanish as México with the phonetic value of the letter x in Medieval Spanish, which represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative. This sound, as well as the voiced postalveolar fricative, represented by a j, evolved into a voiceless velar fricative during the 16th century; this led to the use of the variant Méjico in many publications in Spanish, most notably in Spain, whereas in Mexico and most other Spanish–speaking countries, México was the preferred spelling. In recent years, the Real Academia Española, which regulates the Spanish l
Caribbean Sea
The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico and Central America to the west and south west, to the north by the Greater Antilles starting with Cuba, to the east by the Lesser Antilles, to the south by the north coast of South America; the entire area of the Caribbean Sea, the numerous islands of the West Indies, adjacent coasts, are collectively known as the Caribbean. The Caribbean Sea is one of the largest seas and has an area of about 2,754,000 km2; the sea's deepest point is the Cayman Trough, between the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, at 7,686 m below sea level. The Caribbean coastline has many gulfs and bays: the Gulf of Gonâve, Gulf of Venezuela, Gulf of Darién, Golfo de los Mosquitos, Gulf of Paria and Gulf of Honduras; the Caribbean Sea has the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. It runs 1,000 km along the coasts of Mexico, Belize and Honduras; the name "Caribbean" derives from the Caribs, one of the region's dominant Native American groups at the time of European contact during the late 15th century.
After Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492, the Spanish term Antillas applied to the lands. During the first century of development, Spanish dominance in the region remained undisputed. From the 16th century, Europeans visiting the Caribbean region identified the "South Sea" as opposed to the "North Sea"; the Caribbean Sea had been unknown to the populations of Eurasia until 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed into Caribbean waters on a quest to find a sea route to Asia. At that time the Western Hemisphere in general was unknown to most Europeans, although it had been discovered between the years 800 and 1000 by the vikings. Following the discovery of the islands by Columbus, the area was colonized by several Western cultures. Following the colonization of the Caribbean islands, the Caribbean Sea became a busy area for European-based marine trading and transports, this commerce attracted pirates such as Samuel Bellamy and Blackbeard; as of 2015 the area is home to borders 12 continental countries.
The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Caribbean Sea as follows: On the North. In the Windward Channel – a line joining Caleta Point and Pearl Point in Haïti. In the Mona Passage – a line joining Cape Engaño and the extreme of Agujereada in Puerto Rico. Eastern limits. From Point San Diego Northward along the meridian thereof to the 100-fathom line, thence Eastward and Southward, in such a manner that all islands and narrow waters of the Lesser Antilles are included in the Caribbean Sea as far as Galera Point. From Galera Point through Trinidad to Galeota Point and thence to Baja Point in Venezuela. Note that, although Barbados is an island on the same continental shelf, it is considered to be in the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Caribbean Sea; the Caribbean Sea is an oceanic sea situated on the Caribbean Plate. The Caribbean Sea is separated from the ocean by several island arcs of various ages; the youngest stretches from the Lesser Antilles to the Virgin Islands to the north east of Trinidad and Tobago off the coast of Venezuela.
This arc was formed by the collision of the South American Plate with the Caribbean Plate and includes active and extinct volcanoes such as Mount Pelee, the Quill on Sint Eustatius in the Caribbean Netherlands and Morne Trois Pitons on Dominica. The larger islands in the northern part of the sea Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico lie on an older island arc; the geological age of the Caribbean Sea is estimated to be between 160 and 180 million years and was formed by a horizontal fracture that split the supercontinent called Pangea in the Mesozoic Era. It is assumed the proto-caribbean basin existed in the Devonian period. In the early Carboniferous movement of Gondwana to the north and its convergence with the Euramerica basin decreased in size; the next stage of the Caribbean Sea's formation began in the Triassic. Powerful rifting led to the formation of narrow troughs, stretching from modern Newfoundland to the west coast of the Gulf of Mexico which formed siliciclastic sedimentary rocks. In the early Jurassic due to powerful marine transgression, water broke into the present area of the Gulf of Mexico creating a vast shallow pool.
The emergence of deep basins in the Caribbean occurred during the Middle Jurassic rifting. The emergence of these basins marked the beginning of the Atlantic Ocean and contributed to the destruction of Pangaea at the end of the late Jurassic. During the Cretaceous the Caribbean acquired the shape close to that seen today. In the early Paleogene due to Marine regression the Caribbean became separated from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean by the land of Cuba and Haiti; the Caribbean remained like this for most of the Cenozoic until the Holocene when rising water levels of the oceans restored communication with the Atlantic Ocean. The Caribbean's floor is composed of sub-oceanic sediments of deep red clay in the deep basins and troughs. On continental slopes and ridges calcareous silts are found. Clay minerals having been deposited by the mainland river Orinoco and the Magdalena River. Deposits on th
Cancún
Cancún is a city in southeast Mexico on the northeast coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. It is the seat of the municipality of Benito Juárez; the city is one of Mexico's easternmost points. Cancún is just north of Mexico's Caribbean coast resort band known as the Riviera Maya. In older English-language documents, the city’s name is sometimes spelled "Cancoon," an attempt to convey the sound of the name. There are two possible translations of Cancún, based on the Mayan pronunciation kaan kun; the first translation is "nest of snakes". The second version and less accepted is "place of the gold snake"; the shield of the municipality of Benito Juárez, which represents the city of Cancún, was designed by the Mexican-American artist Joe Vera. It is divided into three parts: the color blue symbolizes the Caribbean Sea, the yellow of the sand, the red of the sun with its rays; as documented in the earliest colonial sources, Cancún was known to its Maya inhabitants as Nizuc meaning either "promontory" or "point of grass".
In the years after the Conquest, much of the Maya population died off or left as a result of disease, warfare and famines, leaving only small settlements on Isla Mujeres and Cozumel Island. The name Cancún, Cancum or Cankun first appears on 18th-century maps; the meaning of Cancún is unknown, it is unknown whether the name is of Maya origin. If it is of Maya origin, possible translations include "Place/Seat/Throne of the Snake" or "Enchanted Snake". Snake iconography was prevalent at the pre-Columbian site of Nizuc; when development of the area as a resort was started on January 23, 1970, Isla Cancún had only three residents, caretakers of the coconut plantation of Don José de Jesús Lima Gutiérrez, who lived on Isla Mujeres. Some 117 people lived in a fishing village and military base. Due to the reluctance of investors to gamble on an unknown area, the Mexican federal government financed the first nine hotels; the first financed hotel was a Hyatt, Cancún Caribe, but the first hotel built was the Playa Blanca, which became a Blue Bay hotel.
It is now named Temptation Resort. At the time it was famous for its virgin white sand beaches; the city began as a tourism project in 1974 as an Integrally Planned Center, a pioneer of FONATUR known as INFRATUR. Since it has undergone a comprehensive transformation from being a fisherman's island surrounded by virgin forest and undiscovered shores to being one of the two most well-known Mexican resorts, along with Acapulco; the World Tourism Organization, through its foundation UNWTO-Themis, awarded the Best of the Best award "for excellence and good governance" to the Trust for Tourism Promotion of Cancún on February 3, 2007. This award ensured Cancún the ongoing support of the Department of Education and Knowledge Management of the WTO. Most ` Cancunenses' are from other Mexican states. A growing number are from the rest of the Europe; the municipal authorities have struggled to provide public services for the constant influx of people, as well as limiting squatters and irregular developments, which now occupy an estimated ten to fifteen percent of the mainland area on the fringes of the city.
In the 21st century, Cancún had avoided the bloodshed associated with the trade of illegal drugs, but is known for its retail drug sales to tourists as well as for being a center of money laundering. The links with Cancún date from the 1990s and early 2000s, when the area was controlled by the Juárez and Gulf drug cartels. In recent years Los Zetas, a group that broke away from the Gulf Cartel, has taken control of many smuggling routes through the Yucatán, according to the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration; the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Cancún from November 29 to December 10 of that year. Apart from the island tourist zone, the Mexican residential section of the city, the downtown part of, known as "El Centro," follows a master plan that consists of "supermanzanas", giant trapezoids with a central, non-residential area cut in by u-shaped residential streets; these open centers have walkways and'sidewalks' around a central garden park, or football fields, or a library, etc. which make the mainland "Mexican" Cancún bicycle-friendly.
The residential roads of central or'Mainland' Cancún, U-shaped and culs-de-sacs, insulate housing from the noise and congestion of the main flow of traffic. Mainland Cancún has a central market that resembles an outlet mall, colorful buildings on a pedestrian city block. Ave. Tulum is the main north-south artery, connecting downtown to the airport, some 30 km south of downtown. Tulum is bisected by Ave. Cobá. East of Ave. Tulum, Cobá becomes Ave. Kukulcan which serves as the primary road through the 7-shaped hotel zone. Ave. Tulum ends on the north side at Ave. Paseo José López Portillo which connects to the main highway west to Chichén Itzá and Mérida. Another major north-south road is Ave. Bonampak which runs parallel to Ave. Tulum; the main ferry to Isla Mujeres is located on Ave. Paseo José López Portillo. To save on the cost of installing sewer systems and other public services, the design of much of the rest of the city reverted to the grid plan after Hurricane Gilbert in 1988; the newest upper-middle-class residential areas reflect the original plan, but are much less intimate.
Less expensive developments are composed entirely of identical one- or tw
Playa del Carmen travel guide from Wikivoyage
State of Quintana Roo