Editor Pick
Yal Ku
- May 30, 2002
- Rated 4 of 5 by
Carmen from Fairfax, Virginia
We had rented a driver for one 8-hour day to drive us to the places that we wanted to see outside of Cancun. In talking with him, I expressed the desire to snorkel, but my reluctance to do so in the open ocean. He suggested a lagoon about an hour and a half south of Cancun, about 15 minutes south of Playa del Carmen by the name of Yal Ku. You have to drive through a beautiful, ritzy Mexican village -- with lots of gorgeous haciendas -- to get there. For $10 per person ($5 entry fee and $5 snorkel rental) you had unlimited time in the beautiful lagoon. You could see it was teeming with fish by just looking over the side into the water.
I asked the man at the entrance what I would see. He said I would see so many fish that I had never seen before that I wouldn't know what to do with them all. Apparantly, there were baracuda in the lagoon, which had me worried, but he assured me that if we took off our shiny jewelry, they'd leave us alone. We also couldn't wear sunscreen, to protect the lagoon waters, so bring a t-shirt if you don't want to fry.
I wish I could've had some kind of waterproof guidebook, because I did see many different kinds of fish, none of which I could identify if I wanted to. The only one I was sure of was the yellow-and-black-striped butterfly fish. I came accross one particularly large, round, black fish with fins the size of my hands. To be honest, he scared me at first beacuse of his size. By the time I had gotten my wits about me, he had disappeared, so I couldn't snap a picture with my underwater camera. He is now my "big fish that got away" story.
From journal Bienvenidos a Cancun