Early in the morning we took the bus three hours from Cancún to the small harbour village of Chiquilá, from where you cross to Isla Holbox. Slightly uncomfortable, since we did not trust the security of Mexican bus travel and did not want to stow our packs in the luggage compartment, taking them to our seats instead. Sadly they do not fit in the overhead lockers, so we had to put them in the footwell.
The locked luggage compartment is probably even more robbery-proof than the passenger compartment, though. If there is any need to talk about insecurity here at all.
From Chiquilá a ferry crosses to Holbox every half hour, delivering its lucky passengers to PARADISE!
Holbox lies at the northern end of the Yucatán peninsula, well off the beaten track of the popular resorts of Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum. That still does not stop everybody from coming here, but there are nowhere near sooo many tourists! Only the westernmost tip of the 43-kilometre-long and 2-kilometre-wide island is developed at all.
An even larger part of the island’s paradisiacal feel comes from its unspoilt charm: all the roads are sand tracks, there are practically no cars, and people get about by golf cart or bicycle.
The buildings are also built in tropical style, supplemented by wooden huts (cabañas) and palm-roofed huts (palapas). Not a single hotel block! Building work is going on busily at every turn, but still all in tropical style, so the island has a chance of staying this paradisiacal. ❤
On our first day we enjoyed the Caribbean flair to the full: lay on the beach, ate at the local fish restaurant, and I watched the sunset from the westernmost point of the island…
Sunset without Jan? Yes, Jan still has severe pain in his left foot when he puts weight on it, and now we know what is troubling him: a heel spur. And as long as he is too lazy to relieve the pain with a few stretching exercises, he will carry on missing many lovely views.
Before that one piece of bad news had been digested, the next was already announcing itself: something in the Mexican food had not agreed with us and late in the evening we were hanging miserably over the toilet bowl.
For me it passed the next day. For Jan sadly not at all. Not even a sip of water stayed down. So after a complicated back and forth we fetched the island doctor, who diagnosed Jan with an infection, put him on a drip and fed him medication for hours. On top of that he was prescribed three medicines and had to come back twice for an injection.
Because of the antibiotics it meant, for the time being: no sun for Jan. I sensed my chance to catch up a bit on my summer tan. Sadly it only stretched to a sunburn. Somehow the Mexican sun was less intense in my imagination than the Australian and New Zealand one. We had already wondered why they only sell factor 50 sun cream and then reached for the only factor 30 option. Not so clever…
But the lovely views on my beach walk made up for quite a lot:
I had also discovered two yoga offerings, which I enjoyed in the morning and evening. It really is astonishing how stiff and ungainly the trail has left me! Quite a lot of work is waiting there!
We extended our stay by another two nights. Who would want to leave this paradise?! And that from me, who am really not a beach holiday person!
I really could live like this: yoga, breakfast, sitting out the midday heat with a Spanish session in the hammock, off to the beach, to yoga or to watch the sunset, food, done. ❤
Roughly like this:
And because it is so lovely and the sunsets were only a minute’s walk from our accommodation, here is one more:
From May onwards Holbox becomes even more stunning: that is when the flamingos arrive and whale sharks cruise the waters! Sadly we will now have to look for those elsewhere!
For a rough overview of where we are knocking about:
Next destination: Playa del Carmen.