Isla Holbox
Narrow mangrove island refuge with a black-water lagoon, wild beaches, and seasonal whale shark migrations offshore.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Isla Holbox off Cancún traces a narrow mangrove sandbar whose Maya name already meant black hole, for its dark lagoon water. It follows the Maya refugees who fled a raid on Yalahau in 1852 to hide here, the pirates said to have used the same shallow waters two centuries earlier, and the tiny fishing community that rebuilt after a hurricane flattened it in 1886. Listen for how a place built for disappearing became home.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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