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Still, gay and lesbian travelers can have a good time here, and weekends provide lots of nightlife excitement (take a taxi or hop on the R1 city bus to get downtown, where the gay bars are).

In 2004 Ortíz opened Glow, the newest and largest gay dance club—just around the corner from Karamba. This darkly lit, two-level dance club spins high-energy electronica every weekend, with accompanying laser lights (and, if you’re lucky, a drag or stripper show). The cover on Friday is about $6.

A bit further down Avenida Tulum is Picante, a much smaller bar with a tiny dance floor. Many locals look down on it as tacky and cheap, and populated with a less-than-classy crowd. One local, Manuel, put it this way: “It’s not the nicest bar, but it’s a great place to go at the very end of the night. You’ve got every kind of person there: men, women, gay, supposedly straight, transvestites, and drag queens. It can be a lot of fun.”

Some local gays go to large mainstream clubs as well. These include Basic, a bizarre white blob of a building that floats above the lagoon in the Zona Hotelera, and Pop, located downtown, which plays dance music and also hosts live music. Just a few steps away from Glow, Roots Jazz Club is a small mainstream venue that serves Caribbean cuisine and hosts live music and art shows.

Like everyone else, gay life suffered from Hurricane Wilma. “Wilma was a terrifying experience,” Ortíz recalls. “Karamba disappeared completely, and it was a very hard blow to overcome, since we didn’t have insurance and we had to put our own money into rebuilding it. Luckily nothing happened to Glow, so we could [devote] eight months to remodeling at Karamba. Now we are trying to return to the level of visitors that we had in Karamba before the hurricane, but we realize that it may take a couple more years.”

In addition to more business, Ortíz is also hoping for greater rights for gay people in Quintana Roo, the state where Cancun is located. “Now there is a bit more openness and respect for homosexuals,” he says, “not only here in Quintana Roo but all over Mexico, since two states of the republic have authorized the Ley de Sociedad de Convivencia, which in reality is the right to marry your partner and obtain the same benefits as any heterosexual couple. We hope that by the end of this year this law will be accepted in the state of Quintana Roo.”

Source: www.passportmagazine.com