The Carless Island — the Yucatán sandbar village where the Gulf of Mexico meets the Caribbean, whale sharks gather offshore each summer, flamingos wade at Punta Mosquito, and sandy streets have no paved roads and no cars
Isla Holbox is a sandbar island off the northern tip of the Yucatán Peninsula — a long, flat, mostly undeveloped island of 12,000 permanent residents separated from the mainland by the Yalahau Lagoon. The island has no paved roads and no cars: transport is by golf cart, bicycle, and walking. The north shore of the island faces the open Gulf of Mexico, with shallow, calm, aquamarine water and low sand dunes; the mangrove-fringed south lagoon is a nursery for birds. Between June and September, whale sharks (the world's largest fish) aggregate in the Afuera Channel north of Holbox in the largest…
The Holbox area was part of the pre-Columbian Maya world — 'Holbox' means 'black hole' in Yucatec Maya (a reference to the dark-water cenote near the village). The island and surrounding lagoon were part of the territory of the Chikinchel Maya chieftainship, one of the 16 independent Maya polities of the Yucatán Peninsula at the time of Spanish contact in the early 16th century. The Spanish conquest of the Yucatán (1527–1546) was one of the most protracted in the Americas — the Maya resisted for nearly 20 years. Holbox remained a largely forgotten fishing village through the colonial and Mexi…