| Xel-ha (official website), pronounced Shell-Ha, is 22-acres of snorkeling wonder! Underground rivers feed the lagoon where the fresh water mixes with the sea. We stayed all day and snorkelled for hours. But, there were plenty of other things to do, as well. Several restaurants on site made for great food breaks. |
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| What a fabulous place to spend a day! This floating bridge is near the ocean entrance to the lagoon. It gets buffeted by waves making it really hard to walk on. I saw something pretty funny happen at the blow hole. A lady was excited to have just made it across the bridge, so she ran up a few feet then turned around to wave at her family. Unfortunately, she was directly over the blow hole, literally staddling it, when a huge wave came in! The world's largest bidet! Since she was fully dressed, I tried to warn her, but she didn't speak English. My only regret was that I didn't get THAT picture!! |
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| The largest fish in the lagoon hang out under the floating bridge. Many of them are 4 to 5 feet long! There are skip jacks, groupers, baracuda, snappers and a few others. We got right in with them. I bought a cheap, one-use Kodak underwater camera. It wasn't very good, but it did take two of these five pictures. Unfortunately, it failed to get pictures of the huge sting-rays on the bottom, some of which were 5 feet in diameter! The smaller, more colorful fish stayed closer to the edges of the lagoon in the shallows. |
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| A lot of people tube down the main river that feeds the lagoon, but we decided to snorkel down (see 2nd picture). In addition to lots of colorful fish in the river, there were lots of things to stop and do along the way. This rope walk was one of the activities along the river. There was also cliff diving which both Tiffany & I dared to try (although only about 20 feet up). The last picture shows Tiffany in one of the many caves around the lagoon. |
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| Iguanas are everywhere! There weren't any huge ones, but there were a lot of these little guys scampering all over the park. |
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I borrowed this aerial view picture from the official Xel-Ha website so you can see all 22-acres of the lagoon. |
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