Isla Holbox, Mexico

If you have followed our travels, you know that we keep coming to some relatively remote beach locations. I love the idea of a tropical island where there are no cars and there is nothing much to do except hang out on a beach. We have been to many different islands and towns in many different countries that are fairly isolated without much infrastructure. Holbox sounded like this would be right up our alley. You need to take a 30 minute ferry boat off the north corner of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. The island has no paved roads and most people just get around on foot. Sounds perfect! So after several weeks of seeing Mexican and ancient Mayan culture, we booked 11 nights on the tropical Mexican Island of Holbox to do nothing.

But I need to tell you the whole story. Isla Holbox has been hit with multiple storms this fall and their “sand road” network is not doing well. EVERY road have some large puddles in them. In fact, I should really call them ponds. They are big enough to make us nervous about crocodiles hiding in them when we were outside of the main town. The golf carts were not able to handle most of the roads even though they were outfitted with big fat offroad tires. The taxis and rentals were jacked up 4 X 4’s so they could go through these ponds. For pedestrians, some of the downtown streets had raised concrete sidewalks, but that didn’t really stop everyone from getting wet feet once in a while. We stayed west of town about 10 minutes – while it was an ok location, we wouldn’t stay in that area again. To avoid walking in “surprise” puddles while walking at night, we ended up walking on the beach most of the time.

The rainy season is now mostly over so the ponds were getting smaller each day until we got a rain shower on day 5 that filled them back up again. I don’t think the town will try and grade the roads until they are sure they are in dry season. I still can’t imagine what this island would have been like during weeks of tropical storms in early fall. I wouldn’t recommend visiting during rainy season unless you are staying close to town and don’t really mind your feet getting wet. We got use to it and actually had some pretty great sunny weather for our 11 days. We spent a lot of time walking the beautiful white beaches that were mostly free from the Sargassum (seaweed) that covers them during the summer and rainy fall. (as previously mentioned, we stayed west of the town, and there was noticeably more sargassum there, to the east where the big long beach is, there was very little of the seaweed.)

Also of note – this island is on the Gulf of Mexico, not the Caribbean – so the water is not the crystal clear that you see in Cancun/Playa del Carmen. It’s still pretty shades of green and turquoise and blue, but it’s a bit cloudy. The beaches are also very shallow, so it’s fun to walk a long ways and only be up to your thighs, but it’s not great if you really want to swim in deeper water. Water temperature was perfect for us.

Isla Holbox is known for being a great place for bird watching. I had arrived on the island with my life list at 598 species so I knew I would be hitting my 600 milestone here. I took several long morning bird walks through the mangroves and along the beaches and was able to see over 50 different species. Unfortunately, I have seen a lot of these before so I only counted about 5 new ones for my life list. There were a lot of shorebirds with many different herons and some American Flamingos.

We celebrated Thanksgiving and also my 56th birthday on the island. Neither were much of a celebration. There seemed to be more European tourists on the island than Americans so we didn’t see any restaurants having a Thanksgiving special like we had last year in Costa Rica. On my birthday, I was overcoming a “Mexico stomach” problem so I didn’t feel like having the island specialty – lobster pizza. Restaurants were a bit more expensive than what we had been seeing on the mainland which can had expected being on a tourist island. The seafood was pretty good, so we ate a lot of fish and shrimp with our feet in the sand.

We stayed a hotel/resort on the outside of town called Deluxe Apartments Holbox. It was about 10 apartments around a small pool and they provided a meager breakfast buffet every morning. We loved our huge balcony but we had mixed feelings on the location. It’s only a block and a half to the nearest beach, but it’s not a beach that’d you’d really want to hang out on. The walk into town on the beach was pleasant, but there weren’t many choices for restaurants near the hotel, so we got a bit tired of the 10-15 minute walk for lunch, then again for dinner. If we were to return, we’d be looking for a place close to town or on the beach east of town because of their road problems, and better beaches. Yes… the roads are still bad in town, but manageable. 11 nights on a beach to do “nothing” was a great respite from our previous weeks of staying in towns seeing “cultural Mexico” and we don’t regret our stay on this island. Coming Up – we continue the beach portion of our Mexico trip with a stay at another Mexican island – Cozumel!!!