Puerto Morelos Reef National Park

Puerto Morelos Reef National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Puerto Morelos is the fishing village between Cancún and Playa del Carmen whose reef, part of the Mesoamerican barrier reef, lies a few hundred metres off the beach inside a national park, and the snorkelling trip is the product: the cooperative of local boatmen on the beach takes groups out in small boats for two hours, with two stops on the reef, life jackets and the park bracelet, which is the fee that funds the park and is charged per person on top of the boat. The tours booked online add hotel pick-up from Cancún or the Riviera Maya, and the versions with lunch at a beach restaurant or a cenote in the afternoon make a day of it; the express trips of an hour are for people on a schedule.

The cenote snorkelling tours from the village go inland to the Ruta de los Cenotes and are a different thing, as are the dolphin swims, the salsa classes, the taco tours and the transfers that fill any search for the village's name. Diving on the reef and the night dives at the Ojo de Agua are sold by the village dive shops, and the fly-fishing and the sailing trips use the same lagoon. Independent visitors walk down to the beach by the leaning lighthouse, choose a boat at the cooperative's kiosks and go out within the hour; the water is shallow and calm inside the reef, which makes it the easiest snorkelling on the coast for children.

Visiting Puerto Morelos Reef National Park: what you will see

The park was declared in 1998 and covers about 90 square kilometres of sea between Punta Caracol and Punta Brava, protecting a 21-kilometre stretch of the Mesoamerican reef, the second longest barrier reef in the world, which here runs only 350 to 1,500 metres from the shore, closer than anywhere else on the Yucatán coast, and encloses a lagoon of seagrass and sand a few metres deep; the reef and the coast are part of the UNESCO biosphere reserve of the Mexican Caribbean. The boats anchor at the buoys on the reef crest, where the elkhorn and staghorn corals grow to the surface, and the snorkellers drift over brain corals, sea fans and gorgonians with parrotfish, angelfish, sergeant majors, barracuda, rays and, on many trips, green and hawksbill turtles and nurse sharks resting under the ledges;

the seagrass of the lagoon is the turtles' pasture. The reef was badly damaged by Hurricane Wilma in 2005 and by the coral disease that swept the Caribbean after 2018, and the park's research station and the restoration teams that replant coral fragments are part of the story the boatmen tell. Puerto Morelos itself was a port for chicle and timber before the tourism came, and it keeps a village square, a beach lined with fishing boats and the lighthouse tilted by Hurricane Beulah in 1967, which is the landmark of the town. The mangroves of the lagoon behind the village are another protected area, and the Ruta de los Cenotes inland leads to the sinkholes of the jungle.

Puerto Morelos Reef National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The boats go out daily from about 9 am to 4 pm, sea permitting, and the reef is closed to boats on days of strong wind. The dry season from December to April has the calmest water and the best visibility, with the peak crowds in the winter holidays; the summer from May to September is hot with afternoon showers and the sargassum seaweed on the beach in some years, and the hurricane season peaks in September and October. Mornings before the wind rises are the best for snorkelling. Allow two hours for the reef, or a half-day with the village. Cancún is half an hour north and Playa del Carmen half an hour south, and Cozumel's reefs are the diving alternative across the water.