Isla Holbox

Holbox is probably my favourite island so far. It's chilled, has awesome food and drink, lots to do, pretty cheap, and the best bit is it hasn't been hit by the Cancun package holiday and cruise ship tourists like everywhere else we'd been.

The roads are all sand and dirt, everyone gets around on golf buggies, and everyone is friendly. The catch? There are mosquitoes.... so, so many mosquitoes.

Getting There

Getting to Isla Holbox is slightly more tricky than the other islands. You can get an expensive shuttle, or even fly if you're very rich. However as a backpacker you'll need to take an Oriente bus (we took the one from Cancun central) of which there are only 2-3 per day.

We got the 12:50am bus to Chiquila, for about 150 pesos. Which takes about 2 and a half hours where you then catch a ferry for another 140 pesos for a single, the boats run every half and hour. They don't appear to sell return tickets - you just buy one on the way back.

Things to do

• Sunsets - we thought the sunsets on Mujeres were meant to be good - Holbox wins hands down though
• Whaleshark tour - for 100USD Holbox is the number 1 place to see them in Central and South America. That said, you aren't guaranteed to see them and people we met who had gone said it's now become a bit of a circus with so many boats often chasing a particular shark in order to swim with them - probably very unpleasant for the animal. We opted to go with a more expensive tour to combat this and then were hit with bad weather so unfortunately weren't able to go. Luckily we got our money back, though I was very disappointed as this was one of the things I really wanted to do.
• Bio-luminescence - You are able to see some cool bio-luminescence on the island too.
• Flamingos - Just a short boat ride away you can see some flamingos!
• Golf buggies - Just like Mujeres you can use golf buggies to get around. We thought they would be cheaper here which isn't true. It's about 1000-1500 pesos for 24 hours.
• Yoga - Kate went to a Yoga (Hatha) session at Tortuga hotel for 200 pesos.

Food & Drink

• Terra Mia - a coffee place on the side of the street with awesome smoothies and bagels too!
• Luuma - Middle Eastern with a Mexican twist - highly recommend, great cocktails apparently though they were out of our budget.
• Bar Alma - Rooftop bar with a pool and cocktails - on some days they have 2 for 1 cocktails!

Where we stayed

We stayed at Ida y Vuelta Hostel in a rooms for a couple of nights for $750 pesos and we also camped for a night for $180 pesos per person. Take and wear mosquito repellent at all times though, they are relentless! Also make sure your tent is as far away from the main areas as possible too - some of the residents can be pretty loud...

You get a small breakfast included - which is a coffee, fruit juice and a small piece of banana bread or toast or similar.

Journal

Arrival:

We left Isla Mujeres on the 11am ferry to Cancun - Gran Puerto. From there we got a 60 pesos taxi to the bus station and booked on to a bus to Chiquila (the ferry port to Holbox) for about 150 pesos. I'd checked online that there were only 3 buses a day to Chiquila, one at 7 am, another around 12 pm, and the last one around 1 pm. I'm not sure if the bus times had changed or the 12 pm bus was fully booked but we got on to one at 12:50 pm. We had about and hour and a half to wait so Kate went off to find food - hopefully the most famous of all holiday eats, bread and cheese.

She came back with some crackers and some cheese slices. At 20 pesos they were an absolute steal! I was very proud of her bargain hunting. After having 2 crackers each we realised the crackers and cheese, were both very cheap and also curiously inedible. We gifted them to the bin nearby. Luckily, after that our tummies were so confused about the cheese and crackers they forgot that they were supposed to be hungry. So, in a way, the cheese and crackers were a great success!

We jumped on the bus - though we were perhaps a bit polite as queue jumping appears to be a sport here - and found some seats. Before long we were either drifting asleep, or reading, or blogging away the journey. With careful sips of water every now and then to keep the perfect balance of dehydration necessary for a long journey on a bus with no toilet. Along the road to Chiquila we passed quite a few accidents. It didn't look like anybody was hurt, but it did look like it would be difficult to get the cars out of the ditches at the side of the road - perhaps it was something to do with the confusing road signage.

Classic Mexican road sign

We got off the bus and made our way over to the ferry port to grab a ticket. We had a 10 minute wait so I ran to a local shop to see if I could better lunch. I went for the classic Pringle and dodgy chocolate biscuit combo. The Pringles went down a treat - mostly down my t-shirt - and the dodgy chocolate biscuits met a similar fate to the cheese and crackers. The boat took about half and hour and before long we were walking along the sandy roads of Isla Holbox.

It had clearly just rained when we got there as there were huge puddles everywhere - we investigated renting a golf buggy to get around and quickly found they were out of our price range. There were also taxis (also golf buggies done up to look like taxis!) that we thought of getting but in the end we decided to walk. It was only about a kilometer to the hostel. We set off walking and it was probably about a kilometer and a half by the time we had circumnavigated all the puddles!

We checked in to our hostel "Ida y Vuelta" in to a private hut with en-suite. It was definitely on the most rustic of places that we had stayed, but it appeared to be clean, and the wifi was good in the room which is always a plus. There was a mosquito net over the bed which was definitely a sign on things to come. We settled in and then decided to go for a walk in search of food.

We explored the islands main town which is very pretty and quickly found that the lack of drainage was actually the reason for the puddles everywhere, they stay for days after rain! They are also probably one of the main reasons there are so many mosquitoes too! We settles on an Argentinian place on the main square with wood fired pizzas. I got a pizza, which was good though a little tasteless, and Kate got the Carbonara.

As we were eating we were also serenaded by a mariachi band from the town square. Our table had a great view. After food we went down to the beach to see the sunset and were treated to a spectacular sunset, by far the best we'd seen. Holbox definitely has better sunsets than Mujeres!

Afterwards we went back up in to the town and went to a bar called "The Hot Corner". When we arrived it was pretty quiet but before long a whole band had setup and was blasting out salsa songs interspersed with lots of "arribas!" and wolf whistling. It was great, and it really got us in to the Mexican spirit - literally. Before long we were indulging in some Mezcal shots. Kate wasn't quite so in to the Mezcal it seemed.

Before long we decided to head back to the hostel for bed, and DEET!

Day 1

We woke up after a reasonably bad nights sleep. Despite the mosquito net it appears we'd both been mauled by the bloodsuckers. To go with that the lack of air-con meant it had been a reasonably restless sleep. We got up and went and got the free breakfast at the hostel and thought about what we'd do with the day. While we were having breakfast it began to rain heavily so the decision to stay in the room and catch up with the world was made for us. We chilled in the room for a couple of hours before the rain stopped and we decided to explore the island some more.

We wondered around looking for a coffee and eventually found a tiny place called Tierra Mia Juice and Coffee bar, which was a tiny little place just off the main square. It's so small it only has two tables which are basically on the road. The coffee was great, the smoothies were great and we had a bagel to go with them - that was awesome.

Great smoothies, coffees and bagels at Tierra Mia Juice Bar

We spent a few hours at the beach after that at a place called Hotel Mawimbi. The beach in Holbox is definitely my favourite beach of the trip so far. Undeveloped and easy going with palm trees going right up the beach, there are also pelicans often seen flying over head. Kate didn't like the sand which is a harder sand with lots of shells however it's just what I like as I hate the fine sand that seems to get absolutely everywhere!

After the beach we took some time to ask around about whale shark tours - they are all around the 1800 mark - 99 USD, most of them do exactly the same thing - you got out around 7, look for whale sharks for a couple of hours, then you come back do some snorkeling, walk along a beach to a light house, have some ceviche, then go see some flamingos. We tried in vain to find a purely whale shark based tour, that was shorter, and hopefully cheaper but the only thing we found was if you had 6 people willing to do - which we didn't.

Eventually after a bit of googling we found Hotel Mawimbi (the place we were at earlier) put on a tour which was quite a bit more expensive, but the reviews said they did a slightly different routine and therefore didn't contend so much with the other boats. The reviews looked great. We went round to the hotel to look at booking in and they only had availability for on Sunday, 3 days later. After a quick discussion we decided to go for it. For $165 USD or $3000 pesos we were signed up for a boat tour to (hopefully) see some whale sharks. And so, our two nights on Holbox were set to become 5.

After we booked the tour we decided to get dinner at the hotel too, it has a really nice restaurant on the beach that also had some great reviews and we liked the look of the menu when we looked earlier. The food was great, I got the Puttanesca and Kate got the squid pasta both were around the $100 peso mark. Afterwards we again watched the sunset at the beach before heading back to escape the mosquitoes and get some rest!

....This time we did our best to tuck the mosquito net in, and I gaffer taped the holes in it!

Day 2

As we were now staying an extra few nights we were deciding whether to camp for a couple of nights - as we had the tent and to save money - or to stay in the room. As we woke up a bit late and our things were strewn around the room we decided to take the room another night and then move in to the tent. The next day.

Our second full day wasn't very eventful - there isn't much to do on Holbox so we took the opportunity to relax at the Hotel Mawimbi beach again - this time with a few beers and some time in their hammocks too.

For a small lunch we got Nachos while swinging in the hammocks - I perfected the art of swinging to my beer on the table and back.

For dinner Kate had decided on a Middle Eastern restaurant called Luuma - it turned out their food had a Mexican twist and was absolutely amazing. We didn't get any cocktails - though they looked really good - and the meal came in at about $300 pesos which was more than worth it!

Day 3

On our third day Kate went to an early morning Yoga session at the Tortuga hotel - it started at 8am (but actually started at 8:15) and went for an hour. It was $200 pesos but Kate actually ended up being the only person there, so it was great value for a one to one session.

Kate enjoying breakfast at the hostel - it was small but free!

We then moved out of the room and I went and put the tent up in what I thought looked like a great area - nice and shady, and next to a very nice Orchid which I took a couple of photos of for my Dad. (Who loves Orchids). They have small lockers at the hostel but not big enough for our big bags so we ended up leaving them in the tent and locking it - we were a little worried about security but there were plenty of people around and the tent was locked with the cover on. There were also a couple of cameras about so we felt safe.

For lunch we decided to go back to Tierra Mia for another great bagel but ended up finding it was shut for a siesta. Instead we wondered down to the beach and had some guacamole and quesadillas at a cheap eatery. It wasn't the best meal but it kept us going. After that we went back to our favourite part of the beach at Hotel Mawimbi for some more relaxing - we were getting very good at relaxing!

Guacamole and Quesadillas at a cheap Taqueria

While we were sitting at the beach a woman came past and handed us a flyer for her bar - apparently there would be a DJ there later, and there was a rooftop pool, and - what caught Kate's eye - two for one on Margaritas! After we'd had enough of the beach we decided to go at check out the bar, it sounded like it would be a bit busy for our likely but we didn't have any other plans.

When we got there is was empty, apparently it was about to rain and so they had called off the DJ. The cocktails however were still good to go. That meant we had a rooftop bar, with a pool overlooking the beach (with two hammocks in), with two for one cocktails, all to ourselves! We jumped straight in and made the most of it. We were glad that we did as it was about half an hour before another group of people arrived and finally an hour later the place started to fill up and we decided to head off to get a bagel for a small dinner. We needed to be up at 6:30am to get to our tour in the morning and we wanted a good nights sleep before that.

As we got back we ran in to a girl that we'd met in Cozumel. We had a chat about what each other had been up to and quickly the conversation had turned to the subject of the whale shark tours. She had done one of the cheaper ones that morning and was pretty disheartened as she thought there were far too many boats swarming around the animals. There is a rule that only one boat can approach the animal at a time but still there was a lot of oil going in to the water and it couldn't be a pleasant experience for the animals. I was glad we were doing a slightly better tour which apparently had it's own schedule and so didn't hound the animals. As we were getting up early we said our goodbyes and headed to bed.

We no longer had our own bathrooms as we were camping so when we got back we went for showers in the communal areas and then got into the tent to settle in for the night. We were hoping that the tent would provide enough protection for us that we didn't need to use repellent to sleep in, that really turned out to be incorrect though. The issue was that any time we opened the zip or went out 4 or 5 mosquitoes would get in or hitch a ride in on us. They were queuing up at the door to get in. I would have also liked to take the top of the tent off however I was worried it may start raining overnight. This meant it got very, very hot in the tent, with very little breeze, to make matters worse there was a light right by the tent lighting the path and we had some very noisy neighbours. It was about 3:30am when I woke up needing the loo so both Kate and I went, only to return with an army of mosquitoes following us in to the tent. We had a bit of a battle with the mosquitoes for a while, including real blood being splattered up the walls of the tent. After which Kate randomly decided to check her emails. She found an email she hadn't seen earlier telling us that the tour in the morning was cancelled due to rough seas.... We were very disappointed.

At this point we were tired, itchy and not up for staying another night in Holbox just to get eaten alive again. I knew the only bus to Valladolid (our next destination) left at 5:40am and we needed to get the ferry at 5am which gave us about an hour and fifteen minutes if we wanted to make the ferry. We were awake anyway, why not?

Much to the dismay of our neighbours who'd been keeping us up all night we got up and started to pack up. It was a race against time to get the tent away and pack our bags all while avoiding the wrath of the mosquitoes - at this point we had put deet on and they miraculously didn't seem to bother us. We were packed up within 50 minutes and had about 15 minutes to navigate back to the ferry terminal and get a ticket. The streets were pretty dark at this point and so it was a little unnerving and there were plenty of unseen puddles ready to announce their existence with a splash and a wet foot. As we rounded the corner to the ferry terminal we breathed a sign of relief as we saw a queue for the tickets and people still boarding the boats. As the buses at the other side wait for the boats we were safe...

As we sailed back to the mainland I reflected that Holbox was awesome, really awesome. But I was sad to hear about the whale shark tours being so busy and even more sad that our tour had to be cancelled. You win some you lose some when travelling.

And with that we were on our way to Valladolid...