Should My Family Go to Isla Holbox?

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Short answer- Yes, your family should absolutely go to Isla Holbox! Longer answer- Mostly, Yes! I will say that it won’t be every traveler’s cup of tea, but it was certainly mine. And by “cup of tea”, I mean my most favorite tea I have ever had in my entire life- actually, forget the tea- margarita, like the best margarita I have ever had in my entire life. Holbox was one of my family’s favorite vacations yet.

Isla Holbox (pronounced Hol-Bosh) is a small island north of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. And by small, I mean 26 miles long by 1 mile wide with only 2,000 full-time residents. Only accessible by ferry or private boat, there are no paved roads, no cars allowed other than the occasional delivery truck, no resorts or high rise condos. Though it’s primary entry point for most travelers is the Cancun airport, it couldn’t be further from the late night spring break crowd that most envision. If you’re looking for a laid-back beach scene with a dose of Mexican flair, this is the destination for you.

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Getting to Isla Holbox

Most visitors will get to Holbox by flying into the Cancun airport. From the Cancun airport, you’ll need to get to the small town of Chiquila, roughly a two hour journey. There are numerous private transfer options, but we went with Go Holbox and were very happy so would definitely recommend. He stopped for us to get drinks and snacks and took us to an ATM (we forgot to go at the airport) before we reached Chiquila. You can also fly into Merida and travel through the Yucatan, but it’s further away- around 4 hours.

Once in Chiquila, there are two ferries that run on alternate schedules. The ferry runs all day and takes 20 minutes. You can buy tickets at the dock; the prices for each are the same, and there are plenty of golf cart taxis to take you to your accommodations when you arrive. The other option is getting to the island via private speedboat. This is actually the option we chose as there were 10 of us and it wasn’t that much more expensive. Because we were staying in a house on the western part of the island, we got dropped off in our backyard (beach).

Where to Stay in Holbox

We rented a house on the western tip of the island near Punta Cocos. We were traveling with another family and wanted to all stay together, have a kitchen, a place for us to hang out while the kids slept, etc. Most AirBnB rentals are on the western side. I really liked staying a little away from the “town”, but if I was traveling without kids, I would have preferred to be closer.

Hotels that I would recommend based of what we saw of them and where I’ll try next are Las Nubes de Holbox, Punta Caliza, and Casa Las Tortugas. Reminder, you are on a tiny island. There is adequate infrastructure, but you will not find any 5 star resorts with the accompanying amenities. WiFi will probably cut out; I think we lost power for a few minutes a time or two, but it wasn’t anything we didn’t expect and didn’t bother us at all. We were on vacation!

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Eat and Drink in Paradise

Almost all of Holbox’s restaurants are centered in or around the town square area and are all an easy walk from one another. There are so many great places to eat (and drink), you’ll have trouble hitting them all in one visit.

We ate most breakfasts at our house, but went to the food stands near the baseball field every morning to get eggs, fruits and vegetables including avocados that were the perfect ripeness every time. They also have fresh juice stands, torta stands and taco stands so we would grab lunch or a snack from here often, too. When we did venture out in the mornings, we loved Le Jardin. The food was divine and they set a table for the kids with a box of sand toys to keep them entertained while we waited.

Lunch was hit or miss for us. We typically were out doing activities and kept getting our timing off. There were also 10 of us when we were all together which made it a little more challenging to just pop in somewhere as many restaurants aren’t large. Our favorite was Viva Zapata, where we had really local food with even better margaritas. With swings rather than stools at the bar, we all enjoyed going up to order.

The Holbox nights were one of the highlights of our trip. We spent almost every night having dinner on the square, letting the kids run around with other kids in the large open court or playing on the playground. We finished most nights with marquesitas (omg, the marquesitas) from one of the food carts lining the plaza before heading back home.

My recommendations:

• The food stands by the baseball fields
• For breakfast: Le Jardin (Calle Lisa 2)
• For lunch, dinner and margaritas: Viva Zapata! (Avenida Damero),
• For barefoot dinner at sunset, Raices (Playa Norte)
• For Holbox’s famous lobster pizza, Roots (Calle Porfirio Díaz)
• For ceviche and empanadas, Las Panchas (Calle Esmedregal)
• For unique, craft cocktails, Basico (Calle Tiburón Ballena) or Luuma (Avenida Damero),
• For sipping mojitos and watching the sunset, Alma Bar (Calle Paseo Kuka)

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What to Do in Isla Holbox?

The reason most people come to Holbox is to do as little as possible. That’s my recommendation, as well. Soak up the sun, play in the calm blue green waters, enjoy the local culture. That about sums it up.

However, If you need to add something a little extra, there’s plenty to keep you occupied. Holbox’s busy season is June-September when people come from all over the world to swim with whale sharks as they arrive at their summer breeding grounds. We didn’t travel during this time, but we heard that the best tour companies fill up in advance so plan accordingly if this is something you want to do. There are numerous other tours that are offered from Holbox year-round. We did the three island tour with VIP Holbox, which included a visit to Yalahua lagoon, Isla Pajaros, and Passion Island. The tour was a great way to see some of the ecosystems that live right alongside Holbox.

Our tour guide recommended we do the tour to Cabo Catoche when we came back. Cabo Catoche is the point where the Caribbean Sea meets the Gulf of Mexico and VIP Holbox’s tour includes fishing, snorkeling and a ceviche lunch on the beach. We haven’t been on this one, but were scheduled to go before our trip was cancelled in March. We’ll definitely be doing it on our next visit. For the uber adventurous, Holbox is home to a community of kiteboarders.

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Any Other Tips?

Must visit beaches: The entire island is one picturesque beach but make sure you venture to Punta Cocos and Punta Mosquito.

Punta Cocos is on the western tip of the island and easy to reach by bike or golf cart and there’s a cute beach bar with good food and swings for bar stools and hammocks for chairs.

Punta Mosquito is on the exact opposite side and during low tide a large sandbar appears and as you walk, you feel like you’re on your own private island in the middle of the ocean. Important! Go only at low tide and I would think about your kids swimming ability and how much they’re able (or more willing) to walk long distances if they’re under 10. We did it with ours, but it looked a lot closer than it actually was, and we ended up carrying most of the kids on our shoulders most of the walk back because the tide started to come in). I don’t know that I would do it again with mine for a while- they were 4 and 6 at the time.

Make sure you bring pesos to the island. There is an ATM and we did end up having to use it at the very end of our trip, but we heard it runs out often.

The vast majority of the island is walkable. We stayed on the western part, near Punta Cocos, which was a little bit of a hike. While the adults could have gotten by with just having bikes, we ended up renting golf carts for our stay to make it easier on all of us. Even if you end up staying toward the center of the island, rent a bike or golf cart and take a trip to Punta Cocos. It’s a must see.

The weather was perfect during March. Our first night was rainy/windy, but we had sunny days after that. The temperature hovered in the mid-80s during the day and was pleasant in the mid-70s at night. Many guides and articles I read warned of major mosquitoes at dusk, but we had no issues when we went.

Travel Budget

For our family, we found Holbox to be a very affordable spring break destination. We typically stay in mid-range to upper mid-range accommodations, with the occasional splurge. Holbox has plenty of options available in those categories. There are a variety of food options at every price point and your family can spend as little (or as much) on activities as you wish. We found the one tour to be enough on our 5 day vacation, but there are plenty of other options if you wanted to keep more entertained.

Here’s our trip breakdown:

Flights

We flew direct from Orlando to Cancun for around $250 per person. Delta had their saver level awards available when we booked so I paid for my ticket and used 45,000 miles to book flights for the rest of my family.

AirBnB

We did this trip as a family group trip so we split the cost of Casa Gonza. It looks like rates have increased this year, but we paid roughly $300/night per family. There are definitely cheaper accommodations on the island so I would put Casa Gonza in the splurge bucket for Holbox.

Transfers

From the Cancun airport to Chiquila, our private transfer in a 10 passenger van was $135 total. Once in Chiquila, we booked a private boat transfer for our group of 10 through our AirBnB. It was $15 per person and delivered us right to our backyard. If we had a smaller group or were staying elsewhere in town though, we would have taken the ferry. In fact, we were planning on taking the ferry on our visit this year which we had to postpone. The ferry is around $7 per person each way.

Food

As I mentioned above, there are so many dining options at every budget level. Because we ate almost all of our meals with kids, we typically ate at more “casual” places. We spent around $700 dollars on food and drinks for the 5 days for 4 of us, but this range can be dramatically different per family as there really are a ton of restaurants options.

Golf Cart Rental

This was our most indulgent spend at $80/day. You 100% do not need to rent a golf cart for your entire stay or any of your stay, for that matter. We were traveling with 4 small kids and stayed at a house on the western end of the island so it made sense for us. We paid for convenience.

Activities

Our private Three Island Tour with VIP Tours was $180 total for our group of 10. We spent the rest of our days at the beach, no money required.

Total Trip Cost for Our Family of Four (Including A Few Miscellaneous other Expenses: tips, a Mexican wrestling mask, extra aloe vera, etc.)

$2,800.

Other Isla Holbox Resources

A little Spanish goes a long way. I ended up using the tiny bit I can still muster more than I thought that I would. It’s not necessary, but it was helpful that someone in our family spoke enough to speak in basic Spanish, especially at the food market. No worries if not though, we were able to get by with pointing, nodding and smiling when our Spanish failed us.

When planning for our trip, here are some articles and posts I found really helpful!

Tips for Holbox with kids: https://kidsareatrip.com/what-families-will-love-about-holbox-mexico/

General Holbox Guide: https://www.gettingstamped.com/isla-holbox-mexico/ and https://theblondeabroad.com/ultimate-isla-holbox-travel-guide/