Holbox is a car-free island off the northern tip of the Yucatán Peninsula, where golf carts and bicycles are the only traffic on streets of packed sand. Each summer its greatest visitors arrive offshore. From June to September, whale sharks — the largest fish in the ocean — gather in the plankton-rich shallows, and small boats take snorkellers out to swim beside them. The island stretches some 42 kilometres end to end yet is barely 1.5 wide, a barrier strip cut off from the mainland by the shallow Yalahau Lagoon. It sits inside the Yum Balam reserve, and roughly three-quarters of it is wild mangrove. The warm, clear water stays knee-deep for hundreds of metres offshore, so you can wade out until the beach is a thin line behind you and the horizon fills with sky.
The island keeps an unhurried rhythm, and almost everything on it happens at the water's edge. Fishing boats slide out through the morning mist, pink flamingos and white egrets stalk the shallow flats, and at dusk the sky over the bay burns orange and violet. On moonless summer nights the sea at the western tip flashes blue-green wherever the water is disturbed. Founded as a fishing settlement in 1854 and left without electricity until 1987, Holbox lived quietly by fishing, above all for lobster, until travellers found it in the 2000s. It fills up now in high season, yet the buildings are still kept low, there are no international chains on the island, and the western end near Punta Cocos stays genuinely calm.