THE BEST bacalar cenotes

The name Bacalar is believed to have gotten its name from b’ak halal, or ‘surrounded by reeds’ in Mayan, with a lagoon – the Laguna de Bacalar or ‘Lake of the Seven Colors’ – to the east of the city. Bacalar is located in Mexico’s far south, close to the international borders of Belize and Guatemala.  It lies a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Tulum and around a 40-minute drive from the city of Chetumal which sits on the border to Belize. If you are traveling from Cancun, it’s roughly four hours or 350 kilometers. 

Bacalar was the first Maya city in the region, which was inhabited for centuries before the Spanish arrived. Due to its location, it was an area central to the pre-Colombian indigenous Maya. Bacalar was the first town in the area which the colonizing Spanish conquistadors succeeded in taking, way back in 1543. It became so important that the southern half of modern-day Quintana Roo was governed from Bacalar.

Bacalar was continuously raided by pirates throughout the 17th Century. The pirates would enter through a canal in the lagoon, now named ‘El Canal de Los Piratas Bacalar’. It wasn’t until the construction of the Fortress of San Felipe that Bacalar could successfully defend itself against the pirates.  However, it did not stop an indigenous Maya army taking back the town during a rebellion known as the Caste War of Yucatan in 1848. Mexican authority didn’t rule over the city again until 1902.

More recently, Bacalar received the official designation of Pueblo Magico or Magic Town in 2006, for the array of experiences it offers visitors to the region such as The Laguna, Fortress of San Felipe and the beautiful cenotes it has to offer.

The clean, cool water dissolves the limestone, which over extended periods of time leads to the creation of tunnels, caves, and caverns. Often considered sacred by the Maya, there are somewhere in the region of 6,000 individual cenotes literally dotted about the Yucatan, with four cenotes near Bacalar itself.