Should You Visit Isla Holbox?

This isn’t a blog that answers that question by telling you how stunning Isla Holbox is and describing its beautiful beaches, breathtaking sunsets, fascinating wildlife and delicious restaurants. Yup, all those things exist, and they’re amazing! Instead, I’m going to answer that question by asking another: should tourists be entitled to travel to wherever we want to go?

Where it all started

Isla Holbox used to be a small, sleepy fishing village whose only occupants were local Mexicans making a living off the abundant seafood. While places like Playa del Carmen, Cancun and Tulum have been overrun with tourists for decades, Isla Holbox was largely undiscovered until fairly recently. This is because it isn’t close to an airport and it requires a boat trip to get there.

Isla Holbox has grown in popularity as people have heard about its beauty, and also because the white sand beaches of Tulum and Cancun have become covered in thick, stinky seaweed called Sargassum. People want their picture-perfect beach photo to post on Instagram, so they’ve started making the trek to Isla Holbox instead!

The Dark Side of Tourism

As a result, tourism on Isla Holbox has blown up. Hotels are springing up all along the beachfront. Many of them built by investors and developers who have never even visited the island. If they had visited, they would discover that Isla Holbox isn’t actually an island, rather it’s a giant sandbar with no fresh water. Check out my brother’s post to learn more about this.

Anyway, what this means is that water runs out on the island, there is no way of processing rubbish and recycling on the island, and the heavy trucks needed for building create giant potholes on the road. It’s crazy that the hotels are building swimming pools right next to a beach on an island that has no fresh-water source!

Fancy hotels require lots of staff to live up the expectations of tourists who have spent loads of money to stay there. But the problem is there is nowhere for all the staff to live. Rather than building accommodation for their staff, the hotels have approached landlords to rent out entire apartments on the island just for their staff. This forces everyone who was previously living in those apartments to move out. It also drives up the cost of accommodation.

Someone working at a hotel or restaurant earns about $6,000 MXN pesos a month (around $500 NZD) excluding tips. A small apartment costs around $14,000 MXN pesos for a month. It doesn’t take a math genius to work out that this doesn’t exactly add up!

Expectation versus Reality

Remember how I said people were coming to the island for their perfect Instagram shot? Well, some of them have been a bit grumpy. You see, every year around December to March, sea grass washes up onto the beaches. It is extremely important as it mixes with the sand dunes and stops the beaches from eroding away. In fact, it is so important that there are laws prohibiting the removal of it. Despite these laws, some hotels and beach bars send their staff out – sometimes in the dead of night – to sweep up the seagrass and get it off the beaches. Just so they can keep their guests happy, and Instagram filled with photos of flawless, white-sand beaches.

Tourism = Bad…Right???

Okay this seems pretty straight-forward, tourism is bad right? We shouldn’t be going to Isla Holbox. Clear cut case!

No. It’s not that simple. Tourism brings valuable money into the local economy and creates a diversity of jobs. Some tourism can even help protect the local environment by funding ecological investment and scientific research. Xel Ha is a great example (and a fun place to visit).

The biggest problem with tourism is when it grows too quickly without proper controls so that infrastructure, like water, landfill, recycling, roading, can’t keep pace. Remember that pesky seaweed from Tulum? Well, some people argue the reason that it’s growing out of control and become such a huge problem is because human waste (yup, that kind of waste – gross!!) has been allowed to pollute the amazing cenotes in the area and these flow into the ocean. While Tulum does have waste-water systems, they were never built to deal with the volume of people staying in the area.

Why do You want to Travel?

So, I think the question we should be asking ourselves as a tourist is not “should I go?” but instead “why do I want to go? and “what expectations do I bring?”.

We should want to go to places for the reasons that make those places special and unique. Not solely to get perfect photos. Isla Holbox is a wildlife paradise, home to hundreds of different bird species and has an amazing natural lagoon. The fact it is a sandbar is really interesting and once I understood the purpose of the sea grass I saw it through completely different eyes – it’s like magic glue!

Be a Guardian!

In New Zealand, through Te Ao Maori (Maori world view) we have a concept called Kaitiakitanga. Kaitiakitanga means acting as a protector or guardian of the natural world (including humans and animals). We practice this by not polluting, picking up our litter, planting trees and looking after wildlife. When we travel, we need to practice Kaitiakitanga. We’re never on holiday from this role. It’s pretty simple really: don’t litter, avoid buying plastic, enjoy eco-tourism and do your research on the best places to stay and spend your money.

And think about how you can give back to the beautiful places you’ve enjoyed. On Isla Holbox, they have an animal rescue sanctuary. We spent the morning there playing with the dogs and then took two of them for a walk (Bala and Pandita).