Isla Holbox, Mexico

After being landlocked for the first couple of weeks of our trip, what better way to get used to being by the sea again than to head to an island? So, we headed to Isla Holbox. White sand beaches and turquoise water. Not a bad place to introduce ourselves to the coast and seaside life of Mexico.

Isla Holbox isn't overly developed and the town itself is pretty small; there are only a couple of roads, most people just getting around on foot, bicycle, motorbike or golf cart. There's only a handful of a cars on the island at this stage. The life here is pretty simple with the shop and restaurant owners seemly just opening and closing whenever they felt like it. Some days for a few hours, some days not at all. There didn't really seem to be any pattern to it!

We spent much of our first day wading through a mix of knee to waist deep water along various sand bars for about an hour and a half to a beach where supposedly we should have found flamingos. Either we didn't walk far enough or the flamingos were hiding because unfortunately they were nowhere to be seen. We did however see some small stingrays (about the size of a small frisbee) and a few different fish along the way, so all was not lost. We returned to our hostel somewhat defeated and almost delirious with dehydration and borderline sunstroke after what ended up to be a 5 hour expedition in harsh sun.

If that wasn't enough for our bods Mike and I set out to punish them some more. Mike headed out for a run and I found another yoga class to do on the rooftop of the hostel - this time run by another girl travelling from Switzerland, at sunset, overlooking the sea. Bliss.

Mike did some restaurant research again and found very unassuming local place that dished out some amazing fish tacos. So good we had to repeat offend the following night. Lucky we turned up earlier though as the second night the restaurant closed at 7pm when the previous night it shut at 8:30. What restaurant serving dinner shuts so early?! Bizarre.

Our hostel also happened to be running a quiz night so we thought we'd get amongst. It was run by a crazy Mexican girl who was mile a minute switching between English and Spanish and full of personality. We ended up being grouped with a couple of Aussie girls and a Turkish guy and surprisingly managed to not come last which was a bonus, although not first either! The quiz night escalated into a night out with one of the Aussie girls from our team and some English lads on one of the opposing teams. We hopped between a couple of bars and ending up at a beach bar/shack with a DJ using a full on huge Apple Mac computer on a random desk in the sand. Classic.

We woke up feeling a bit worse for wear the following day but pushed through and walked past multiple building sites, some of which seemed abandoned, to a different beach with hardly anyone else around which was really nice. Isla Holbox is a bit of a weird spot. You can't tell if it's developing more or not really. Many of the building sites seem half done and then just left. But who knows!

We had hoped to swim with whale sharks here but unfortunately found ourselves visiting out of season, so we're going to have to save that for another time!

All in all, Isla Holbox gave us a mixture of relaxation, party time and some much needed beach time, but also I think it's the beginning of a completely different side of Mexico. A much more commercial and touristy side, but we shall see.

For now we're heading back to the mainland, Cancún is our next stop and some well-overdue reunions await!Read more