It’s already warm but quiet in the car park just after 7am when I hear a cackle. Muted morning light filters through the tree canopy – perfect conditions for my mission. My hope is to spot at least one of two green parrots, both under special protection, courtesy of Mexican law.
A scrabble of parrots screeches high up in the jungle branches. I lock my binoculars on their hysterics while leaves parachute to the ground. The Amazona albifrons – or white fronted parrot -resembles a cartoon gangster.
The bird sports a snow-white forehead, teal blue crown, a scarlet-red eye patch that bridges its nose and, when at rest, its emerald-green wing feathers reveal a flash of scarlet and lapis lazuli blue. In the air, these primary wing colours are spectacularly on display, like a rainbow in flight.

I’m up early for parrot spotting after Osvaldo Paez, an environmental engineer, tips me off about these birds and a plan to study their comings and goings. Osvaldo is sustainability manager at the luxury Maroma, a Belmond Hotel on Mexico’s Maya Riviera, voted among the top 100 Hotels & Resorts in the World. He’s been in post since 2022 and his is a full-time role; it’s not just lip service around here I discover.
Chalacaca, chicken-like birds, protest loudly from low-hanging branches and social flycatcher, melodious blackbird, and great kiskadee tweet from the trees
The gorgeous Belmond sits on a swathe of golden sand on Maroma Point, a world away from CancĂºn, the Mexican Caribbean’s gateway city and its splurge of hotels. I pinch myself. Here I am, just a 45-minute drive away, in glorious isolation amid the beach, birds and wildlife.
Maroma, a Belmond Hotel
Maroma, a Belmond Hotel is enveloped in tropical jungle where low-slung, curved white casitas with artfully decorated rooms dot the oceanfront. Last year, a grand renovation elevated the property with new touches in craftsmanship and revitalised its spa.

Paths wind through the leafy grounds for guests but are used, too, by roaming coati, a fearless russet-red racoon family member, and agouti, a large brown guinea-pig type creature – but with longer legs. Chalacaca, chicken-like birds, protest loudly from low-hanging branches and social flycatcher, melodious blackbird, and great kiskadee tweet from the trees. Recently, a member of staff disturbed an anteater dozing next to the gym!
Close to shore, vulnerable West Indian manatee linger. Inland, lowland tropical jungle cloaks the YucatĂ¡n Peninsula and shelters almost 500 bird species, jaguar, monkey and puma
The Belmond sits on a coast that embraces an immense amount of wildlife. The Mesoamerican reef, the second longest barrier reef in the world unfurls along the entire coast. It’s home to more than 50 coral species, reef shark, manta rays, whale shark, and marine turtle species.
Close to shore, vulnerable West Indian manatee linger. Inland, lowland tropical jungle cloaks the YucatĂ¡n Peninsula and shelters almost 500 bird species, jaguar, monkey and puma.

So, what is Maroma doing to protect its natural treasures, I ask Osvaldo.
‘The new Maroma is based on sustainability,’ Osvaldo tells me.
Energy, carbon output, recycling, water, the environment and protected species are all under Marom’sa microscope.
‘We’re proud to maintain about 80 per cent of the hotel’s grounds as untouched jungle,’ he explains. ‘And when we renovated Maroma we didn’t create a single new room for guests as we wanted to respect the essence of the hotel.’

That essence, now that nature is at its heart, is trailblazing – a model for other hotels who invite guests into fragile, wild sanctuaries.
Nesting Ground
Inches from the sun loungers are nesting grounds for endangered and vulnerable marine turtles (more than 90 per cent of the thousands of turtles returning to the area are Green turtles). Females return to the sands they hatched in to give birth to a new generation – laying up to 180 eggs in deep sand burrows.
From the end of May until November (hatching season) a biologist heads out each night from the hotel looking for the traces of turtle flipper movements in the sand that lead to the nests. These are then marked discreetly. If the nest is close to where sargasso is cleaned from the shoreline or in danger of being stepped on, the eggs are moved to the hotel’s corral. More than 10,000 babies were released just from the corral alone last year.

‘We can care for 80 nests at a time,’ Osvaldo confirms.
‘After 45 days or so if they haven’t hatched, we help them get out of the nest and release the babies. Guests may take part but only if the timing is right,’ he says. ‘We don’t do it for entertainment.’
Maroma has taken its care a step further. In November 2023, the Starlight Foundation, backed by the Astrophysics Institute of the Canary Islands, awarded Maroma a starlight certificate, rubber-stamping the hotel’s exterior lighting as animal and turtle friendly.
‘In the Riviera Maya we’re losing our universal right to star light which is also our national heritage so we’re looking to protect and inspire other hotels to take measures about light’
Osvaldo Paez, Sustainability Manager
Heavenly rights are important, too, Osvaldo tells me.
‘We’re promoting the right of the light from stars, too. If you go to the hotel strip in CancĂºn, the light reflection is terrible,’ Osvaldo laments.
‘In the Riviera Maya we’re losing our universal right to star light which is also our national heritage so we’re looking to protect and to inspire other hotels to take measures about light,’ he tells me.
From Birds to Bees
It’s not just the light from stars and the turtles that are under threat. Smaller species, too, hang in the balance. We walk through Maroma’s grounds to woodland with a hatchery. Beehive boxes and tree logs are stacked on shelves.
En route we pass a huge shifting cloud of tiny black bees that appear to be seduced by a tree trunk. But we don’t swerve (or scream!) as these are the Melipona bee which do not sting. Melipona beecheii are sacred to the indigenous Maya people of southern Mexico who use the little honey the bees produce for medicinal reasons.

But they’re vulnerable due to shrinking forest habitat. Belmond takes the insect’s plight seriously. It has donated technology, a worm composter, beehive boxes, and a hydroponic system to a Bee School in the Yucatec jungle.
‘It’s incredible that the Maya children don’t know what a Melipona is,’ Osvaldo rues.
Belmond has doubled down on protection, too, and allies with NGO Selva Maya and Guerlain who run the hotel’s beautifully revamped Maroma Spa by Guerlain where treatments are all bee or honey based. Selva Maya looks after more than 400 hives.
At the hatchery Maroma staff care for 12 hives in boxes and two in tree trunks – the stingless bee’s natural hive spot. They’re surrounded by the Florida thatch palm and ziricote, whose flowers they favour for their pollen. As the bee produces little honey, the Melipona features at Maroma in spa treatments such as bee buzz therapy and sound healing.

I know now I won’t find the honey extensively used in the hotel’s cuisine (what the kitchen uses doesn’t come from the hotel’s own hives). That said, sourcing food for an ethos rooted in low food miles is important at Maroma’s restaurant Casa Mayor.
Maroma signs up to #PescaConFuturo (Fish For the Future), a sustainability model. Putting its mouth where its words are, so to speak, means staff deal directly – hand to hand – with the Fisherman’s Alliance of Punta Allen in the protected Sian Ka’an nature reserve, 3. 5 hours’ drive away. These fishermen respect the rules of catching lobster only at a certain size of growth, Osvaldo tells me.
With so much at stake on the coast and for the produce harvested from the warm Caribbean waters – Maroma pledged guardianship, too. It partnered with Parley for the Oceans – a global environmental organisation that takes action for the oceans – in June 2024 to inspire its workforce to protect ocean life.

Staff snorkel out to map coral on the reef – which sustains endangered elkhorn, rare staghorn and brain corals. They’ve listened to talks from pioneering Mexican female conservationists and collected 500kg of rubbish from an abandoned adjacent beach this year. Osvaldo proudly tells me these staff will graduate as ‘ocean guardians’.
‘Our staff will be citizen scientists and raise consciousness about the environment,’ Osvaldo says. ‘Many of them have never had to the chance to snorkel the reef before.’
Later that night I eat overlooking the gently lapping waves. I salute Maroma and its wish to tread lightly, protect profoundly and inspire future generations to treasure Mexico’s natural jewels.
Details
Prices start from AED 3,900 per night in a deluxe garden room.
Fly daily with Emirates to Cancun (one connection) with prices starting from AED 6,900
For more information visit the Maroma, a Belmond Hotel website here