Isla Holbox

We decided that our last little adventure of this trip should be to Isla Holbox, a 30km strip of land just off the northern tip of Yucatan and at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico. Its a cool little island with a tiny town in the middle of it where there is no cars only golf carts and no roads only sandy streets. The plan was to come here, maybe have a few days windsurfing, chill a little and just enjoy some long walks around the island…old Tropical Storm ‘what’s his name’ had other ideas though! The tail end of the storm was still lashing rain and winds on the island so we actually spent quite a lot of the time hiding from rain and thunderstorms (and mosquito’s, there were hundreds of them and they were hungry!). The windsurfing also never happened because of the wind direction and speed, think the instructor was worried we’d end up in Maimi! So it was a bit of a wash out, bit like the streets of town, and we just made best use of the hours of non rain by going for beach walks, swimming in the sea and trying to find flamingo’s. At one point we were standing about 50 meters out at sea on a sandbank trying to avoid a river that cuts through the island and the flamingo’s were only a few hunderd metres away when a thunderstorm rolled in. As you can imagine we panicked and thought it was best not to be standing in 5 inches of water with lightening flashing nearby! We finally did get to see them though the following day, plus lots more pelicans, sea eagles and a few other birds that I have no idea what they were!! Holbox is very undeveloped and unlike most other beach places in this area (ie Cancun) and is perfect for a few days getaway although it seems that lots of people over the years have just turned up and 6 years later seem to still be on the island, but for us 5 days was enough before we started to go a little stir crazy, we really do need to learn how to relax!