Searching along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, Don Pablo Bush Romero came by boat from Cozumel, looking for sunken treasure from the wreck of the Spanish galleon, El Matancero. His expedition found the shipwreck, located right off the shore of what is now the Aventuras DIF beach, just south of Akumal.

 

Don Pablo made camp at Akumal ("the place of the turtle," in Mayan), just north of the wreck site, which at the time was a coconut plantation run by the Tun family.

 

Don Pablo saw Akumal as a perfect tourism destination and he purchased the plantation and the properties just north of the plantation and south to Xel-Há. As he began to develop Akumal, he and his friends created the Club de Yates Akumal, or the Akumal Yacht Club, which, by the way, had no yachts.

 

The Club de Yates owned about 4 hectares of property and, in 1993, realizing that tourism development from Cancún was growing down the coast, decided by unanimous decision to put their four hectares of property into a trust and created Centro Ukana I Akumal, A.C. The property was given to the ecological centre as a way to generate funds and provide infrastructure for environmental initiatives to protect Akumal’s coastal and marine ecosystems and biodiversity.