Lake of Seven Colors — the Yucatán lagoon town where Caribbean-clear water shifts from turquoise to cobalt to deep violet within metres, 18th-century Spanish forts guard the channels, and a cenote feeds the lake with crystalline freshwater
Bacalar is a small lakeside town in southern Quintana Roo, on the shore of Laguna Bacalar — a 55 km long freshwater lagoon fed by cenotes and underground rivers, whose extraordinary colour gradient (turquoise shallows to navy deep) has made it one of Mexico's most beautiful inland water bodies and a rapidly growing Instagram destination. The town itself has kept its character: wooden-facade shops, a colonial main square, and a restored 18th-century Spanish fort (Fort San Felipe Bacalar, 1729) built to defend against British pirates and Baymen coming from British Honduras (modern Belize). The…
Bacalar ('the place of five hills' in Yucatec Maya, or alternatively 'place of the reed') was one of the most important Maya settlements of the eastern Yucatán — the Chetumal Maya chieftainship had its principal centre here before Spanish conquest. The Spanish established a mission and settlement at Bacalar in 1545. Fort San Felipe Bacalar was built in 1729 as a defensive fortification against British pirates and logwood cutters from British Honduras (Belize), who regularly raided Spanish settlements along the Laguna coast. During the Caste War of Yucatán (1847–1901) — the most successful ind…