We don't pretend to be experts on Holbox. (Well maybe we pretend just a little bit but at least we're honest about it.) While we do have plans to go again, as this is written, we've only been there once. But since we have been there that one time and this is supposed to be a regional travel site that offers personal experiences and opinions, here is our take on the island.
Isla Holbox (hole-bosch) is a picturesque little island located in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico just off the northern tip of Quintana Roo. The only town on the island is also known as Holbox and has a population of about 1,500. It's out-of-the-way location and the time it takes to get there are probably the biggest reasons that it doesn't attract more tourist than it currently does.
The island is roughly 26 miles long and less than ¼ mile wide in most parts. In reality, it is little more than a low lying sand dune with most areas less than 5 feet above sea level.
The green waters of the Gulf of Mexico on the north side are extremely calm and relatively shallow around the island.
As a general observation, the people of this island are very friendly and welcome visitors with open arms and a smile on their face. The streets are sand covered; the buildings are painted in bright colors and few of them rise over 2 floors.
In our experience, we've discovered that you can learn a lot about people by the way they treat their animals. On Holbox, dogs are treated like kings. We saw a surprising number and variety of pure bred dogs and almost without exception, they were healthy, well behaved and well treated. It was not unusual to see dogs riding along with their masters in golf carts.
Interestingly, there may be some hidden away but we never saw a cat during our visit to the island. We speculated that cats could some serious harm to the indigenous bird populations there.
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The most common way to travel to Holbox is to take the bus from Cancun (or Merida) to the town of Chiquila and then catch a ferry to the island. Once there, you'll be greeted by golf cart taxi drivers for the short ride to your hotel. If you happen to arrive in Chiquila and you don’t want to wait for the next ferry, you can also hire a ponga style boat for a water taxi ride across. But the ferries run almost every hour so no matter when you arrive, it won’t be a long wait for the next one.
You can also obviously drive to Chiquila, where there is a parking lot nearby the ferry pier. In fact, if you have a group of 4 and are only planning to stay a couple nights, even hiring a rental car for the drive won’t cost that much more than the bus (particularly if you have to take a bus to Cancun to start your journey) and will save you a lot of time going and coming as well as allowing you to travel whenever you want rather than relying on the bus schedule.
It is also possible to take a flight on a small commuter plane from Playa del Carmen or Cancun directly to the island.
Buses depart the main bus station in Cancun for Chiquila at 4:30am, 6:00am, 8:00am, 12:40pm, 1:30pm and 2:15 pm. The bus will drop you right at the ferry pier for the 20-minute ride across the Yalahua Lagoon to the island.
Buses run from Chiquila to Cancun at 5:30 am, 7:30am and 1:30 pm. The 1:30pm bus waits for the arrival of the ferry that departs from Holbox at 1:00pm before heading off for Cancun.
The bus is an “intermediate” class vehicle run by the Mayab company. The ride can take anywhere from 3 to 3-½ hours depending on how many stops it makes. There is open seating and the bus is air-conditioned but does not have rest room facilities.
The driver will stop for anyone standing along side the road who waves them down and will drop off passengers anywhere they want along the route. During the course of the ride, venders with various food and drink offerings will hop on at one stop and after walking the isle and serving passengers, hop off at the next stop.
The bus costs $62 pesos (or about $5.50 USD at this writing in July 2006) each way. The 20-minute ferry ride between Chiquila and Holbox is $40 pesos each way.
Once on the island, there are two main forms of transportation; walking or travel by golf cart. There is a car ferry that also crosses to the island but it transports service vehicles almost exclusively. It is very rare to see a personal vehicle traveling the sand packed streets other than golf cart, scooter, bicycle or ATV. Even the beer delivery trucks are mounted on golf cart frames.
Golf cart taxis are inexpensive to hire and carts can be rented for $80 pesos an hour.
We made a recent trip from Cozumel to Holbox. We took the 9:00am ferry to Playa del Carmen and walked across the square to the bus station. On the far left of the waiting room is an ADO ticket counter exclusively for travel to Cancun. The Playa to Cancun service operates like a shuttle. There always seems to be one loading and departing at short intervals.
The bus will put you at the Cancun bus station at around 11:15am leaving time to buy your ticket and to possibly grab something quick to eat before the 12:40pm departure.
Our ride was mid-week and we encountered relatively few stops along the way arriving in Chaquila in 3-hours. It is a very short walk to the boat at the pier, which departed at around 4:00pm. The ferry arrived in Holbox 20-minutes later and we were checking in to our hotel at around 4:30pm.
On our return, we took the 1:00pm ferry to Chaquila. When we arrived, the bus for Cancun was waiting at the end of the pier. The bus left at around 1:40pm but almost immediately began to make stops much like a local city service. The return put us in Cancun just before 5:00pm. We bought our ADO bust ticket to Playa (the Playa shuttle counter in Cancun is at the far right of the terminal) and immediately boarded a waiting bus. We took the next ferry departing Playa at 7:00pm and walked into our house in Cozumel around 7:45pm.
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From our limited exposure to the island, the local dining scene seems to feature two main themes in restaurants: seafood and Italian. And there is what might be considered Holbox fusion dining: Italian seafood restaurants.
First and foremost, this is a fishing village and every bite of seafood we ate there was extremely fresh and reasonably priced for a vacation destination.
At Colibri, about ¼ block south of the Main Plaza, we enjoyed a delicious seafood soup. It had a relatively light but flavorful broth and was full of lobster, shrimp, prawn and fish. The restaurant also features cakes for desert and on the night we ate there, the chocolate cake served was a huge portion of one of the most flavorful and moist chocolate cakes we’ve eaten. Our entire bill for 1 entrée of the soup and another of a fresh grilled filet in garlic sauce plus the cake and a couple drinks was about $200 pesos.
We had pizza for lunch the next day at Evelyn Restaurant and Pizzeria. It’s located on the southeast corner of the Main Plaza. We didn't try their house specialty Lobster Pizza. The marguerite pizza we did order was decent but nothing special.
That night we had a very nice meal at Viva Zapata. It’s about a half block west of the north end of the Main Plaza. The fried calamari starter was nicely presented on a bed of lettuce. We ordered a whole grilled fish (that we think was king mackerel) and another plate of fish filet. We like mackerel but find it has a tendency to go “fishy” if not extremely fresh. No problemo at Viva Zapata. With a tip, the entire meal for 2 was less than $250 pesos.
We didn't eat at La Cueva del Pirata but it appeared to be one of the most popular restaurants in the town. We never did figure out why an Italian restaurant would have a pirate theme. It's located right on the Main Plaza.
Faro Viejo is a hotel and restaurant located on the beach and has a beautiful view. We enjoyed cocktails and coffee there while watching the sunset before going out each evening and had an excellent breakfast of heuvos monteleno our last morning in Holbox.
A favorite treat for visitors to Holbox is Maresa ice cream. You can buy these tasty cups for $15 pesos from several locations in town including a home a couple blocks south of the Main Plaza and from an ice cream “truck” on a golf cart. They have a wide variety of tropical flavors including our favorite, Pina (pineapple).
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There is a decent range in terms of style and prices of hotels from palapas to a holistic health spa resort as well as a few house rentals available on the island. An Internet search will turn up quite a few options. Most offer beach front locations.
Hotel Holmar is the only place we’ve ever stayed in Holbox so we can’t give too many other first hand experiences there. Holmar is a small (5-room) new (2005) hotel located about ¼ block from the beach and a couple short blocks from the Main Plaza. The room was large with a quiet air conditioning unit and cable TV but no phone. The bathroom was clean and had a good-sized shower. Our room had 2 firm comfortable “matrimonial” (similar to queen) sized beds covered only with a sheet. There is a small pool that is adequate for a relaxing dunk but not for swimming laps. The staff speaks limited but basic hotel English and was extremely helpful in booking tours and making restaurant recommendations. There is a small shop selling souvenirs and some traveler basics. We were pleasantly surprised when we asked if they had a throwaway underwater camera for sale and one was produced. Our room cost $800 pesos ($73) a night including all taxes and fees. We would definitely stay there again.
At this writing, Holmar does not have a web page but you can reach them by email at: holmar36@hotmail.com or by phone: +52 984 875 21 00.
Quite a few hotels in Holbox sustained significant damage in the storms during the summer and fall of 2005. At this writing, many had reopened but some others were still being repaired and some others appear to have been abandoned. It is likely that many new rooms will be available in the near future. Holbox is a popular vacation destination for Mexican nationals. With the current limited number of rooms, it would be wise to have reservations before your arrival.
We didn’t stay there but Hotel Mawimbi is a cute place in a good location. Not all rooms there offer a/c.
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Holbox is first and foremost a fishing village. Traditionally, many of the tourists that have come to Holbox have been fisherman and that still remains a popular activity on the island. There is a wide variety of fishing options including deep sea and fly fishing.
The pace of life in Holbox is very tranquil. Unlike Cancun and other better know resort destinations, this is a place where you can truly relax and enjoy nature. In addition to enjoying a swim in the very calm waters, the local beaches are a shell hunter's delight.
Isla Pájaros (Bird Island) is a 30 minute boat ride from the town. Tours are available to view the more than 140 species of birds that live or season here including a large flock of pink flamingos.
Yalahau Lagoon separates Isla Holbox from the mainland. There are some nice fresh and brackish water swimming holes and other large groups of birds (including flamingos) in the mangroves bordering the lagoon around the island.
But today, the big attraction (sorry for the intended pun) is the chance to snorkel with the whale sharks that summer (June to September) in nearby waters. Drawn by the calm seas and the abundant supply of plankton, these massive fish gather in relatively shallow waters about 8-10 miles off shore.
Whale Sharks are really not whales. That term is used to describe the size of these giant fish. The average shark is 25 feet but they may grow to 50 feet and weigh up to 15 tons. They have thousands of very small teeth but actually feed by filtering plankton through their gills. They are really very gentle and don’t seem to bothered by the attention they receive from humans.
The typical tour gathers at a wooden dock in Holbox around 7:00am and departs by 7:30am. On the ride out to the whale sharks, it is common to see large pods of dolphins and giant manta rays. On our trip, we got to see a manta jump completely out of the water as our boat approached.
With the stops to see the dolphins and mantas, it took us about 1-½ hours to reach the whale sharks. In the general area where we found them, there were 15-20 of them feeding by sweeping almost in a grid pattern. When we left the dock in the town, there were several other boats departing as well but none of those boats were in the same specific area while we were swimming with the sharks so there must be multiple locations where similar numbers can be found.
A dive master will take groups of 2 people at a time into the water. The boat tries to drop the snorkelers so that the fish is swimming directly towards them and then will sometimes circle around attempting to guide the fish back towards the snorkelers for a 2nd pass. Then others on board are rotated into the water until everyone on board has had several chances to swim with the fish.
Because of the heavy plankton that draws them to the area, underwater visibility when snorkeling with the sharks is not very good. When we were dropped in the water directly in front of them, we could see them coming when we poked our heads above the water. But when we looked below, there was a feeling of “I know they’re coming. I know there coming. I know there coming but I can’t see them.” Then when they get to within about 6-feet, there they are: huge and right on you. It was enough to make grown ups scream with joyous surprise.
After everyone has had a chance to snorkel several times with the whale sharks, the boat heads back towards the town. On the trip back, most boats stop near an island with a large pink flamingo and pelican flocks.
We were back to the town at roughly noon.
There are a lot of tour operators that are offering very similar trips. We booked ours through our hotel with Holbox Island Tours at a cost of $800 pesos per person. They also offer all of the other tours mentioned in this discussion.
The dive master and captain did not speak much English and gave us little instruction except “don’t touch the fish”. Air vests were available but not required and decent snorkel gear was provided. The boat was well designed (except for a ladder that needed one more step), in excellent condition and with the very calm waters, was able to travel along at a fast clip. There were a total of 9 divers on our boat and we were not crowded at all.
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There are no banks or ATMs on the island but there are a couple internet cafes. One across from the main plaza had a sign offering a money exchange service but when we tried to use it, they had no pesos to exchange for dollars. USD are accepted everywhere but at about 10-15% less than the official rate. Credit cards are accepted at larger hotels and a few of the restaurants and stores in town but don’t be surprised if they add on a 5% bank charge to your purchase.
In addition to packing cash and sunscreen, bring along insect repellent as well as the mosquitoes can be a bit fierce at night.
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