Story and photos by Bob Schulman

It's what you don't see that makes this place so special. No hotels, no restaurants, no discos, no shopping malls. They're all here, of course - this is Mexico's largest resort area. But when you're driving down this 130-mile stretch of the Yucatan Peninsula, you mostly see an untouched tropical paradise edging the azure waters of the Caribbean.

That's the whole idea. Local laws cap the height of the hundreds of hotels and other buildings scattered along the beaches at three stories. That's low enough to keep them hidden from the highway by a half-mile-wide buffer zone of dense jungle and palm trees. What's more, the resorts tend to be far apart, thanks to another law that restricts development to only 5 percent (10 percent in special cases) of an owner's land.

Welcome to the Riviera Maya, Cancun's not-so-little brother on the Yucatan. The new kid on the block started out in the mid-90s as a few secluded hideaways down the beach from Cancun, all told with about 1,500 rooms. Today, the room count comes to 30,000, and it's growing at a rate of 3,000 a year.

Most of the Riviera's guests - close to 3 million a year - get here by van from Cancun International Airport. A few miles from the terminal, the road comes to a three-way junction. Going straight ahead will take you to Cancun Island and its famous 14-mile row of high-rise palaces dotting the white sand beaches. A left or northern turn will take you to Cancun City, once not even a speck on the map and now home to a half-million people.

Go right, or south, and you're on your way to the Riviera. It starts 13 miles down the modern, four-lane highway at the little town of Puerto Morelos. From there, the highway runs through the Riviera's lush foliage - skirting most of the hotels - for 60 miles to the Mayan ruins at Tulum. The highway angles inland from Tulum for 70 miles to the end of the Riviera at Carrillo Puerto (where the reward for getting this far is an immersion in traditional Mayan culture).

It's usually pretty quiet along the Riviera. For example, Puerto Morelos could be the poster child for a sleepy Mexican fishing village. You can walk from one side of the town to the other in about 15 minutes, without spotting a McDonalds or a Pizza Hut nor any T-shirt stores or souvenir stands. What you will see are some of the friendliest people in Mexico going about their business, mostly in shops around the town square.

Another non-touristy patch of the Riviera is between Tulum and Carillo Puerto, where the highway edges a 1.3-million acre biosphere reserve called Sian Ka'an (meaning "gift from the sky" in Mayan). Here, a few thousand inhabitants share the wetlands with more than a hundred kinds of animals and 336 known types of birds.

Of course there's a number of hot spots along the Riviera, too. About 20 miles south of Puerto Morelos, for instance, you'll find the booming beach town of Playa del Carmen (population: probably over 100,000) and its usually packed, quarter-mile-long "Fifth Avenue" shopping lanes.

From there you can follow the tour buses and vans heading down the coast to the eco-playland at Xcaret, the sprawling marina, golf links and cafe-lined lagoons of Puerto Adventuras, the diving mecca at Akumal, the water wonderland of Xel-Ha and the once-remote ruins of Tulum (now Mexico's third most-visited archaeological site).

Along the way, visitors bunk down in all kinds of lodging, from $25-a-night thatched-roof cabanas to $1,000-and-up beachfront villas. On the high end are hotels such as the posh Maroma Resort and Spa just south of Puerto Morelos, and beyond that the 100-acre Mayakoba project featuring a Greg Norman-designed golf course and a deluxe Fairmont property. Several more ritzy hotels are planned to open their doors there over the next year or so.

A little north of Puerto Morelos, the Ceiba del Mar Spa Resort offers 83 of the most luxurious rooms, suites and penthouses on the Riviera. The tone of the resort, a sort of subdued elegance, is set by works of Mexican art throughout the property including an exquisitely woven, eight-foot-long Oaxacan wall hanging in the lobby.

"We want our guests to have the very best," a spokeswoman says, " but we never want them to forget they're in Mexico."

For more information, visit the Riviera Maya Tourism Board's website at www.rivieramaya.com or the Mexico Tourism Board at www.visitmexico.com.

The Ceiba del Mar is at www.ceibadelmar.com

Denver-based freelance writer Bob Schulman is a member of the Mexico Writers Alliance and the Society of American Travel Writers.