We mainly stay on the resort but we do love to go snorkeling.
There are a lot of places on the resort where there are fliers and you can look at different trips. We wanted to do the Xel-Ha sites, but it’s an all day thing, you need to get transportation and we really didn’t do research before hand (if you do decide to do this know you MUST bring all natural sunscreen because the oils in regular are damaging to the reefs).
So we decided to do an hour and a half snorkeling trip from our resort. Which for us was a perfect amount of time.
They can take up to 10 people but no one signed up for when we went, so we got the boat to ourselves. We hopped on the boat from our resort and it took us about 15 minutes to get to the spot. This is the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef and from what I’ve read it’s the second largest coral reef stretching 600 miles. We docked right outside a small town Puerto Morelos and snorkeled outside there. Lots of coral and ton’s of fish that swim RIGHT next to you!
The people that took us knew exactly where to go and would point things out for us. He found a baby star fish and let us hold it in the water. He even found a sea turtle and and we got to go see that which was awesome. Then when we were done snorkeling they took us to find the big star fishes and see the manta rays which are way faster swimmers than I realized. We held the star fish for a few seconds and then put it back in the water.
TIP
- We tipped them halfway through just to say good job, it’s like anyone, encourages them to continue to do an excellent job, plus they really did go above for us. The one guy even took my GoPro when he went to swim for the starfish to bring it up for us. So I think we ended up tipping about $15 or $20 because Dee tipped again at the end.
- Also I’m pretty sure my dad always tries to negotiate price. I’m not sure how much it works but if you’re comfortable trying, it never hurts!
- We brought our own snorkeling masks from home because otherwise you have to use ones other people use. We also bought ones that cover your face fully which we love. Click Here to see what I mean. The ones we have they don’t sell anymore but this is basically the same thing. My dad bought this one so we each had one.