This New Train Is Making It Easier to Explore Remote Corners of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula—How to Visit

Dawn was breaking over the lagoon when I looked down and saw one of the oldest life forms on earth. 

It wasn’t much to look at. Lumpy, white, and sitting just below the surface of the water, it resembled an overgrown cauliflower. But its appearance notwithstanding, this was one of the most remarkable objects I had ever encountered. 

“It’s called a stromatolite,” my burly and ebullient guide, Edwin Ruiz, explained as he nursed his flask of morning coffee. This one, he continued, was probably around 12,000 years old. The first stromatolites lived 3.5 billion years ago: the organism is a living fossil from the planet’s earliest days.

Ruiz was leading me on a sunrise kayaking tour of Lake Bacalar, a long, finger-like lagoon in southern Mexico near the border with Belize. Nicknamed “the lagoon of seven colors,” in the sunlight it occupies that blue-green part of the spectrum in which turquoise shades into teal, cerulean into cyan. The stromatolites, which are formed by colonies of microbes that metabolize carbon and nitrogen in the water, help keep the lagoon pristine. That morning, it was so clear that paddling through it felt like floating across a sheet of Saran wrap.

Bacalar was the southernmost stop on a 10-day trip around the Yucatán Peninsula organized by Journey Mexico. At that early hour, my wife, Charlie, and our 18-month-old son, Leo, were both still sleeping in our lakeside hotel, Boca de Agua. In recent years, Bacalar has emerged as a serene alternative to busier and better known places like Tulum, farther north along the Caribbean coast. But now the lake, and the nearby town of the same name, are on the cusp of great change.

This is thanks to the arrival of the Tren Maya, a vast new railway network with 34 stops along almost a thousand miles of track. The route circles the Yucatán and connects the peninsula to the neighboring states of Chiapas and Tabasco. Built at a cost of $29 billion, the railway is meant to help lure visitors away from coastal hot spots like Cancún and to create jobs and development opportunities in a region that has long been one of the poorest in Mexico. It was designed to carry as many as 30,000 people a day, ferrying them between the Yucatán’s colonial towns, Mayan ruins, nature reserves, and white-sand beaches.

Its inauguration has provoked as much controversy as excitement. Among the concerns of the project’s detractors has been its impact on delicate ecosystems and archaeological sites that have so far escaped the heavy tread of tourism. Of all those ecosystems, Bacalar is arguably the most beautiful—and vulnerable. The arrival of the railway (Bacalar’s Tren Maya station opened just a few weeks before we arrived) presents both an economic opportunity and an environmental challenge. Tourists have been known to walk across the stromatolites, treating these microbial cities as stepping stones. If they are broken by clumsy feet, these millennia-old life-forms can die. 

Then there is the threat posed by new development. After heavy rains a few years ago, runoff from construction sites turned the water a murky brown. Around the same time, thousands of endemic water snails, which form a crucial part of the lagoon’s food chain, washed up dead on the shore. The migratory birds that eat them disappeared and didn’t return until the snail population rebounded the following year. 

As we paddled on, the shoreline came to life. Frigate birds began to glide past us, their spearlike beaks and thin, angular wings giving them the prehistoric appearance of pterodactyls. The mangrove forests resounded with birdsong: the high trill of swallows and the guttural croak of snail kites. As the new railway brings an influx of tourists to Bacalar, the question is whether the area’s growing popularity can be balanced with conservation. 

I had ridden the Tren Maya myself a few days earlier, when I took it from Izamal, a 16th-century colonial city known for its egg-yolk-yellow buildings, to Mérida, the grand capital of Yucatán state. It was the first day of our trip, and after a long journey from our home in Washington, D.C., Charlie and Leo had decided to recuperate at our hotel, Chablé Yucatán, a beautiful and sprawling 18th-century hacienda outside Mérida. While they rested, I set out to explore with a local guide, Victor Hugo Lizama Morales, a man of Falstaffian scale and bonhomie who owes his name to his Francophile mother. 

Lizama Morales figured I could use some refreshment first. We began the day by driving into the countryside to an isolated cenote, where I swam alone in a cathedral-like underground chamber pillared with stalactites. Next we stopped in a small town, Acanceh, where we were the only visitors at a small Mayan temple, dating from A.D. 500, that was likely dedicated to the sun god Kinich Ahuau. Together we climbed to the top and communed with a huge face in stucco, complete with glaring eyes and enormous earlobes. The cenotes and Mayan ruins along the coast between Cancún and Tulum have long been overrun with Instagrammers, but elsewhere the Yucatán is peppered with overlooked treasures like these. Far from the madding crowd, we had them all to ourselves. 

By the time our driver had deposited us at the Izamal train station for our return trip to Mérida, it was dusk. The station was so new that they were still painting the walls. The service was still in its “soft launch” phase, and there were hardly any passengers waiting for a ride and little for the guards to do. One was watching YouTube on his phone, while another canoodled with his girlfriend in a discreet corner. 

After a short delay, our train arrived, and we climbed aboard. As we got on and settled into our spacious green seats, Lizama Morales looked a little grudging. He had been critical of the Tren Maya. As construction of the railway got under way, he was interviewed for a Canadian television news show and called the project “a huge waste” that cost too much money to build. Ever since, he had taken a principled stand: until that day, he had never once set foot inside a Tren Maya station, let alone boarded a carriage. 

But gradually, as we enjoyed a couple of cold lagers from the dining car, he began to relax. After several hours cooped up in a car on hot, dusty roads, it was frankly a relief to be whisked along in an electric hush, with generous legroom, cool air-conditioning, and a well-stocked café. 

“I have to admit,” Lizama Morales said, “it’s pretty nice.” 

The Tren Maya was the flagship project of Mexico’s former president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO for short. It was a central pillar of his so-called Fourth Transformation, which included a government-investment program aimed at reducing inequality in the poorer regions of Mexico. Southern states like Yucatán have long been economically sidelined. Away from the bustling tourist centers, a large proportion of the population lives below the poverty line. This is especially true of Indigenous Mayans. 

The following morning we drove south from our hotel in Mérida into the countryside, which was populated with hardscrabble communities. We were on our way to see a project whose founders could benefit as tourism spreads around the peninsula. We pulled up under a tree in the dusty courtyard of Xcanchacán, a hacienda in the village of the same name that was founded in the 18th century to farm corn and cattle. In the 19th century, the owners began growing henequen, a species of agave whose fibers can be turned into a cord that is used to make products like rope and shoes. At its height, Xcanchacán was one of the largest henequen estates in Mexico, employing more than 700 indentured workers. 

The hacienda closed as a working henequen farm in 1985. Today it houses a small craft business run by Rosalba Guadalupe Dzul Pam, a petite woman in her mid-thirties, and her cousin Soledad. After greeting us in the courtyard, Rosalba led us to one of the hacienda’s workshops, where we found Soledad sitting on a low stool in a billowing white dress embroidered with blue flowers. Displayed on walls and shelves all around her were the baskets, platters, and ornaments that she makes with henequen. 

Soledad was born in the 1960s at Xcanchacán, where her father worked as a laborer. She began working at the hacienda when she was still a child, but when it closed she was forced to find work as a housekeeper in Mérida, a two-hour trip away. Then, in 2016, she took a training course with the Fundación Haciendas del Mundo Maya, an organization that supports and promotes traditional Mayan craft. She learned how to work with henequen and the logistics needed to establish her own business. 

In the studio, Soledad took us through the basics. She began by separating the tangled fibers by dragging them across an apparatus topped with a set of six-inch metal spikes. Then she gathered a few fibers together and began rolling them across her thigh to twist them into a cord, which would then be woven into items to sell. One of the pieces made at Xcanchacán, a small henequen bird, is sold at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The workshop also supplies one of Mexico’s Four Seasons hotels. Yet even with such high-end clients, Soledad said, it is proving difficult to make the business pay. Of the 35 women who took the FHMM course with her, only six are still working with henequen. “Not enough people come here to make the money to employ more,” she said. 

After the demonstration, we piled back into the car and drove the short distance to Rosalba’s house, where we met with her mother, Ady, grandmother Norma, and daughter Genesis. Rosalba led us into the garden, where the trunk of a plum tree was painted with white lime to protect it against termites. As Leo chased Genesis around the kitchen, Rosalba and her mother prepared lunch—a delicious meal of chicken cooked in a broth of cinnamon, clove, laurel, and sour orange. 

That afternoon we continued our drive south in the direction of Bacalar. Five hours later, we turned off the highway onto a long and deeply rutted track running into the forest. After a bone-shaking mile we saw our hotel, Boca de Agua, glowing in the trees. 

Opened in late 2023, it is one of several new hotels in the Yucatán whose launch has coincided with the arrival of the train. It was designed by Frida Escobedo, an award-winning architect from Mexico City whose other commissions include a new wing for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that is scheduled to open in 2030. When conceiving the hotel, Escobedo was mindful of the environment around Lake Bacalar. To minimize impact on the landscape, she built a series of wooden tree houses raised on stilts above the forest floor to keep the woodland intact. 

This wave of new attractions is not limited to accommodations. I met up with Matteo Luthi, Journey Mexico’s managing director, who happened to be staying at Boca de Agua, too. That day he had some time to spare, so together we decided to explore Ichkabal, a Mayan city dating back to around 400 B.C. that had just opened to the public. 

We parked at Ichkabal’s impressive new visitors’ center and headed along a path that bordered a huge, Mayan-built square reservoir. The existence of Ichkabal was only confirmed in 1996, after a local ranch owner had reported traces of stone temples to archaeologists at Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. Excavations started the following year. 

Farther down the path we passed two small pyramids whose stones had been half exposed by the archaeologists. The way these buildings had been dug out, leaving some of their structure covered, gave them the appearance of freshly discovered works in progress, which only added to their romance. 

We made our way into thick forest and climbed up a makeshift staircase cut into a bank of earth. At the top, we came out onto a huge plaza framed by steep-sided temples on three sides. The space is thought to have been used for public ceremonies and announcements, Luthi explained. The plaza’s enclosed structure would have amplified sound in the manner of an ancient Greek theater. 

At Mexico’s most famous ruins—like Chichén Itzá, which receives more than 2.5 million visitors a year—tourists are banned from walking on the temples. But at Ichkabal, which has so few visitors, it is allowed for now. Ahead of us was another staircase, this one stone, which climbed up the front of the tallest of the three pyramids around the plaza. Luthi and I clambered up the steps, past masks of Mayan gods carved into the stone, to the flat platform at the top. 

From there we could see for miles across the jungle, the flat landscape marked by the occasional tree-covered mound. Some, Luthi said, were probably other unexcavated structures. I wondered if others, farther into the distance, concealed ancient cities yet to be discovered. 

After Bacalar it was time to head north, up the coast toward Tulum and the nearby Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, a 2,000-square-mile span of tropical forest, lagoons, mangroves, and marsh. Unlike Bacalar, which is relatively new to tourism, Tulum has been transformed from a sleepy backwater into a pumping party town. I wanted to see how the nature reserve, which has been protected since 1986, has coped with so much development on its doorstep. 

At Tulum, we picked our way slowly along a rough track to a tiny dock and set out by boat into the shallow lagoon of Sian Ka’an. As we sped up, the rain began to fall, so Charlie sheltered Leo beneath her raincoat. Above us, sea eagles floated on the wind, their eyes darting as they searched for prey in the water. By this point we were speeding through a heavy downpour. But Leo, encased in Charlie’s jacket and rocked by the movement of the boat, was unperturbed and quickly fell into a deep sleep. 

After 40 minutes we arrived at Casa Chablé, which sits on the narrow spit of land that separates the lagoon from the Caribbean Sea. From our beachside bungalow we had an uninterrupted view through a grove of coconut palms to the beach. Soon after we arrived, the weather cleared. We spent the rest of the afternoon sunbathing and introducing Leo to his first waves. 

The following day I headed to the pier at Casa Chablé to meet Isiah Ancona, a boatman from Punta Allen, a small town on the peninsula’s tip. Ancona is one of the few boatmen who have a license to carry tourists into the reserve. And with private tours running upwards of $450, visitor numbers have remained low. Even so, the outside world is pressing in. For those in charge of protecting the biosphere, keeping the beaches on the peninsula’s eastern side free of trash washed in from the sea is a constant struggle. 

Ancona and I set out into the lagoon. He told me that he spends most of his time leading fishing expeditions, and his boat was decorated with stickers from angling clubs from as far afield as Idaho and Denmark. But I was not there to fish. Instead, I wanted to spend the afternoon watching birds: Sian Ka’an, I had learned, contains 379 species. 

We headed to the epicenter of the lagoon’s avian life—the aptly named Bird Island. As we approached I saw a column of frigate birds circling above the island as though caught in a tornado. Up close, Ancona pointed out the inflatable red sac on the throats of the males, with which they emit the deep clucks that filled the air—the sound of mating season. As we rounded the island we passed a large colony of brown pelicans and then, picking their way along the shore, a “bowl” of roseate spoonbills, the bright pink of their plumage popping against the pale green water. 

Afterward we began to putter around the lagoon’s shallow waterways. There was life everywhere we looked. An osprey carrying a fish in its claws. A pair of cormorants perched high in a tree, with their wings outstretched to dry in the sun. At one point Ancona spotted a shadow under the surface ahead of us, and I raced to the front of the boat to see what it was. I made out not one but three shapes inching through the shallows, which then rolled out of the water one by one. It was a trio of dolphins that swim into the lagoon every day from the sea to spend the afternoon in the calmer water of Sian Ka’an. Despite the litter washing up onto the beaches nearby, the lagoon itself appeared to be clinging on and the wildlife was flourishing. 

As we headed back to the hotel later that day, I thought back to my morning kayaking trip on Lake Bacalar, still so pristine but on the cusp of huge change. Sian Ka’an suggested that these ecosystems can persist, provided they are properly policed by people like Ancona, who keep a tight grip on tourism. 

It had been a cloudy day, but by then the sun was breaking through. As the sky turned blue, so did the water. The horizon separating air and liquid began to blur. In the Mayan language, Sian Ka’an means “where the sky is born.” Looking out at the vast flatness of the lagoon, from which the sky seemed to emerge in one seamless flow of color, I began to understand the name.