Chilling on the Caribbean coast of Mexico

After being in Valladolid and exploring the cenotes, we decided to spend our last few weeks in Mexico chilling out on the beach. 

Isla Holbox 

We took a short bus ride and ferry to Isla Holbox - an island on the North of the Yucatan pensinsula. Holbox is a small island and there are no cars or roads, instead people either bike or use golf carts to get around. Other backpackers had recommended Holbox to us, and we had heard that it’s a popular island with backpackers. When we arrived it seemed (like other places we’d visited in Mexico) to have changed over the past few years, and we found the island to be Americanised and pretentious (and expensive!). But we enjoyed spending a few days here, exploring the island, looking at the street art, and eating some delicious food!

The beach was nice, though lots of it was taken up by sun loungers from hotels and bars (who wanted £30 per chair from people to sit on them!). Like other parts of Mexico and the Carribean, the beach had lots of seaweed in places - over the past few years the seaweed (Sargassum) has been getting progressively worse in this part of the world, mostly due to pollution and climate change. But the seaweed didn’t stop us from enjoying the beach, swimming in the sea and working on our tans. 

Puerto Morelos

After a few days on Holbox we decided to leave and see some other beaches nearby. We decided to skip Cancún and Playa del Carmen as they are very busy and full of resorts, and instead headed for a small fishing town sandwiched between them - Puerto Morelos. We had a stressful journey because we got on the wrong bus, but only discovered this 2 miles into the journey and had to then walk the 2 miles back to the bus stop in the midday heat! But when we arrived we took an instant liking to Puerto Morelos - we liked that it was small, had lots of locals living there, and had a really good vibe about it. So much so, we planned to stay 3 night and ended up staying a week. 

We stayed in a lovely appartment, with a pool and sea views, and after so many weeks of rough hostels, shared bathrooms and sharing kitchens etc it felt like heaven to have our own space. Ash liked that the local supermarket was a few minutes walk from the apartment, so every day he went in to buy something to cool for dinner (and to sample the huge in store bakery!). We ate really well all week, thanks to Ash’s cooking - lots of fresh food and vegetables (which can be hard to come by as a backpacker). 

On two of the evenings we stayed there was entertainment put on in the square - one night was live music, and the other night was street performance/entertainers. The beach here was really nice, there was some seaweed but lots of it had been cleared by the bars/restaurants on the beach. 

We went on a snorkelling trip one day, having read and heard about this part of Mexico having the second largest reef in the world and being good for snorkelling. But we were left disappointed and saddened when we got into the water and saw that lots of the reef was dead, what remained was monoculture, and there was hardly any marine life left. It seems that the reef here has been destroyed by tourism, climate change and a parasite which has swept through the reef in Mexico destroying most of the corals. 

Laguna Bacalar 

After spending 10 days on the beach, we decided to make one more stop before leaving Mexico - Laguna Bacalar. Laguna Bacalar is a long lake (42km long) set back from the coastline, and lots of people we had met in Mexico recommended we stop there. The lake itself was lovely, the water was very clear, and it’s called the lake of seven colours because it had different shades of blue. 

Our accommodation was set back from the lake in the local part of town, and we were sad to see how run down it was - there was rubbish everywhere. Our accommodation here was a big come down from our lovely appartment in Puerto Morelos. Our room was pretty basic and dirty, there was rubbish all over the hostel garden, and the kitchen was an outright health hazard. We even had ants in the bed (which was a first for both of us). 

Frustratingly, it was very hard for us to actually see or access the lake as the lake shore has been bought up by restaurant and hotels, who have fenced off access to the lake making it private. We managed to find one jetty with public access so that we could see the lake, and go for a sunrise. We decided to go on a boat tour around the lake which we both enjoyed. Adjacent to the lake is two open cenotes, and their groundwater feeds into the lake, showing up as a different colour. We also got to swim in the lake which was lovely, the water was very clean and clear (and there was no sign of the crocodiles which we heard live in the lake!).

Overall, we enjoyed our time relaxing on the Carribean coast, and it was a perfect way to end our trip in Mexico. We had moved around Mexico a lot, and covered a lot of ground in a short time, which had left us both feeling exhausted. It was so great to have some time relaxing in one place, and to be able to create a bit more routine and normality to our days. It was sad for us to see the sargassum and the impact this had had on the beaches here, as well as how the reef has been destroyed. Like places all around the world, there was a lot of plastic and rubbish in the sea and washed up on the beaches, and travelling to places like this feels bittersweet because we know that inadvertently we are contributing to this pollution by being here as tourists. In many places we visited, the locals told us that they don’t want rubbish in the environment, but they also don’t have a rubbish collection, so they either have to burn it or leave it in piles (which inevitably get blown around). 

Next stop: Belize!