Royal Uno All Inclusive Resort & Spa Live Cam

A resort on the northern arm of the Cancún hotel strip fills the picture, with pools, terraces and the Caribbean behind. The camera looks over them from the building.

The brown weed banked along the sand is sargassum. Since about 2011 enormous rafts of it have drifted west across the Atlantic from a belt that forms off Brazil and West Africa, and hotels along this coast now rake and cart it away every morning in season.

Cancún was chosen for development in 1970 and built from nothing on a sandbar. The strip is a barrier island with the sea on one side and a lagoon on the other, and this end of it faces sheltered water.