On most Caribbean islands, snorkeling means walking into the sea with a mask. Holbox is different. The island sits on a shallow, sandy shelf north of the Yucatán, and the water off the main beach is often cloudy with stirred-up sand, with no reef underneath. Nobody sells beach snorkeling here because there is nothing to see.
What people call Holbox snorkeling is three separate things. From 1 June to 15 September a boat takes at most 10 people 1.5–3 hours each way to find whale sharks, and you swim beside them in pairs with a guide. All year, boats run 40–45 minutes to the Cabo Catoche reef, about 2–4 m deep, where you fish, snorkel for as long as you like and eat ceviche from the catch. After dark you can spend 1.5 hours in a long wetsuit in water that glows when you move.
They are different days. The whale-shark trip is a long morning on open water for two short swims. The reef trip is shorter, calmer and runs every month. The night swim needs no boat at all. Which one fits depends on your month, how you handle a boat, and your children's ages; the rest of this page sorts that out.
