Overview
The island keeps a working town at the north end, a road down the spine, and the ruins of the Ixchel shrine on the cliff at Punta Sur, the easternmost point of Mexico and the first place in the country to see the sunrise. Playa Norte at the town end is a shallow white-sand beach that shelves so gently you can wade a long way out. Golf carts are the standard transport and the island can be circled in an hour.
Highlights
Take an early ferry from Puerto Juárez rather than the Hotel Zone piers, which cost more and run less often. Punta Sur has a sculpture park and the shrine, and is worth the cart ride for the cliff alone. The MUSA underwater sculpture museum is dived and snorkelled from here, in water shallow enough that snorkellers see most of it.