Xel-Ha Review

Overall 3.00 of 5 (by 1 user)

mrkstvns
Austin, TX

Xel-Ha Gives You the Natural World of the Yucatan In One Day!

love nature, love to travel, off the beaten path, family traveler, active traveler, on the beach, fun-loving dad, exploring Mexican culture

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Pros

snorkling in a limestone cove, swim with dolphins, beaches, nature trails

Cons

Expen$ive

AUG

2008

Xel-Ha —

I have mixed thoughts on Xel-Ha. Part of me resents pre-packaged "natural experience" places like Xel-Ha (or even Discovery Cove in Orlando, for that matter), but I understand that a lot of people just want to a kind of "Nature Lite" travel experience where everything is organized, planned, and set up to be experienced quickly, conveniently, and cleanly.

That's basically what Xel-Ha is all about.

The park is built around a Caribbean cove that's got limestone formations underwater and that attracts many kinds of colorful tropical fish species. Most people traveling to the Caribbean coast go diving or snorkling along the off-shore reefs, but those often take a little more effort, skill, and time to see than cruise ship passengers and tourists on all-inclusive timeshare packages will budget. Xel-Ha lets them get a little taste of the Caribbean sea life without the full Monty.

Xel-Ha also has a "swim with the dolphins" program and they've got manatees, making them a kind of "one stop shop" for "experiencing" Yucatan's aquatic natural world. They've got a "river experience" area, a "cliff experience" area, not to mention some eateries and souvenir shops to help pull the dollars out of your wallet.

Most people visiting Xel-Ha come for just a few hours, usually as part of a cruise ship shore excursion or a package tour deal lumped together with Tulum. If you do a day-trip here on your own, it can be ridiculously expensive as the basic gate price is over $60 and there's add-ons galore for many of the activities.

If you're already on one of those cruise ships and the Xel-Ha shore excursion is on your list of candidate things to do, it's probably a good bet and one of your better choices for cruise trips, but if you're in the area on vacation, I wouldn't even THINK of doing Xel-Ha over a day out diving or snorkling the reefs with a local panga captain.

Xel-Ha is recommended by mrkstvns

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Comments about mrkstvns’s Review

My husband and I went there and really enjoyed it. It was perfect for me since I am not an experienced swimmer and get nervous when other people aren't around. I loved the River Experience part of the trip but beware of the HUGE biting ants that hang out where you put your flippers on before going into the river!