Our main activity for the day was to take a three hour cruise around the lagoon which included two stops for swimming. The tour group offered both sail boats or pontoon boats. We chose the latter because of comfort. Our guide was a delightful 22 year old who left home at the age of 15 and already owned two boats of his own. One of his goals is to sail around the world. I am sure he is going to achieve that goal. We learned that the lagoon, which is 26 miles long, is made up of 4 cenotes that have collapsed. Some are exceptionally deep, up to 130 m or over 390 feet. The different depths create the different colors of the water on the surface. The cenotes are either cone shaped or cylinder shaped. The latter being the deeper. People scuba dive to explore them. There are also underground passages leading from one cenote to another. People have died getting trapped in them. The lagoon also has an earthquake fault line. The lagoon opens to the sea and is feed by springs. Its bottom is composed of powdered sulfur. There is little vegetation so very little animal life. There are barracuda in the deeper parts of the lagoon. Across from Bacalar, there is a channel that once opened to the sea. As the Spanish were famous at the time for transporting ships full of silver & gold from the New World back to Spain, the whole Caribbean became a magnet for pirates, corsairs, buccaneers and all sorts of bandits & castaways looking to make themselves rich. They would routinely sail up the channel to attack the town, giving the channel its name: ‘El Canal de los Piratas’ or The Pirate Canal. If you want to know more about Bacalar and pirates, here is a link to an interesting article.

https://www.mexicokantours.com/post/bacalar-lagoon

At the entrance to the pirate canal, we were able to go out swimming. Here are the pictures I took with the underwater camera as I was out and about. It was fun swimming in the lagoon.

After having lunch, we went into town for Berni to buy some things. Bacalar is still a cute Mexican town. It is a little touristy with lots of restaurants and hotels but it still has kept its charm. There is a ruined fortress in the center of town right on the waters edge.

After our walk around the downtown area, we went to the club we had access to. We hung out for awhile before heading back to our airbnb. Here are some photos.

I wanted to have a nice dinner on our last night so after some research, I selected a place. It did not disappoint. We both had a margarita and the fish of the day. The fish turned out to be sea bass perfectly grilled on a bed of grilled vegetables and creamed rice. Before the main dish we got an appetizer on the house of homemade vegetable tortillas with a variety of salsas served in a unique way.

I am going to really miss Bacalar. It is a delightful place with good restaurants and amazing water activities. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t get much better than that. Luckily it’s still not too developed. I fear for what the future holds. I saw what too much tourism can do to a town when we were in Tulum and Akumal. As my goodbye photo to Bacalar here is a picture of the Airbnb. We had the second story unit with use of the top deck. It really turned out to be a great place to stay especially because of the upstairs deck where we ate breakfast and lunch.