Isla Mujeres, Spanish for “Island of the Women”, is an island in the Caribbean Sea about eight miles off the Yucatán Peninsula coast. To the west the skyline of Cancún can be seen across the clear waters. The island is roughly four miles long and one half a mile wide and has approximately 12,000 inhabitants.

In Pre-Columbian times the island was sacred to the Maya goddess of childbirth and medicine, Ix Chel.When the Spanish arrived in the 16th century they named it “Isla Mujeres” because of the many images of goddesses.

Text adapted from Wikipedia