I kayak back through the Pirate’s Channel, and the sleepy town of Bacalar comes into sight, spread along the lagoon’s western shore. The 18th-century San Felipe Fort that the Spanish built to defend against pirates stands in stark contrast to the town’s peaceful vibe. Today, the fort is a well-kept museum chronicling the rich history of Mayan trade, Spanish conquest, and piracy.
There are two large Mayan ruins nearby, but the closest thing to a pirate ship I find is the catamaran at the end of the channel whose owner, Ramon, is the first person I have seen after five hours along the mangroves. With a smile peeking out from his bushy beard, he looks like a buccaneer who is quite content to never again return to the open ocean.
Indeed, this lagoon — a narrow waterway stretching 26 miles — would suffice for more than a few seamen. Much as the Mayans used the surrounding jungle’s hardwoods to make canoes, Ramon used local mahogany felled by a hurricane to build his catamaran’s deck. Upon it sit wooden chests and a table with everything you could possibly need for a morning on the water: two bird-watching guides, a jug of water, a bowl of fruit, and snorkel gear.
Ramon, clad only in skivvies, free dives into a cenote, or sinkhole, signaling to me to follow before he drops out of sight. I kick hard with my fins, going down and down, and discover the cenote’s stalactites. Cenotes deposit onto the lagoon’s bottom white calcium carbonate silt that, when struck by sunshine, reveals the resplendent blue spectrum.
I spend an afternoon staring at the blue palette from a beautiful palapa, a thatch-roofed structure by the water. In comfortable wooden furniture, I eat fish marinated in achiote (annato seeds) and cooked in a banana leaf. After dessert — mango bavarian cream with strawberry sauce — I move onto the dock, where a chair swinging out over the water is the perfect perch to finish my book, along with a few rum drinks. I cannot imagine a better place to while away the day.
