Mexico’s top snorkelling and wildlife adventures – A Celebrity Race Across the World-inspired trip
Inspired by Celebrity Race across the World? Get the vibe in the Yucatán — with the added frisson of a very large swimming companion…
Ed Grenby - 2 December 2025
Image: Studio Lambert
It’s the “express kidnappings” that seal the deal for me. The Foreign Office’s travel advice page for Colombia lists perhaps two dozen dangers, from ruthless “armed narco-trafficking groups” to potentially fatal “traditional hallucinogenic tea”. But it’s those express kidnappings – for when the gangs just can’t be bothered with a full kidnapping – that really put me off.Image: Studio
I mention it just in case you’re watching this week’s finale of Celebrity Race across the World, with the teams dashing to the finish line on Colombia’s Guajira Peninsula, and find yourself thinking, “That place looks nice, let’s go there.” If that’s the case, put down your cup of traditional hallucinogenic tea, pop open BBC iPlayer and watch the first episode, where the race started in Mexico’s Isla Mujeres – which is prettier, easier and considerably safer.
True, the island is only 20 minutes’ ferry ride from the tacky nightclubs and low-end tat-purveyors of Yucatán tourist hotspot Cancún, and Isla Mujeres has its own fair share of party boats and piña colada joints. But it’s also a jumping-off point for one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had in the Caribbean: swimming with whale sharks.
These underwater ogres are among the world’s largest predators – as big as buses but still distinctly, unnervingly, shark-shaped (because they are, in fact, sharks). I’ve always desperately wanted to/not wanted to swim with them, and here, in the open ocean just off Isla Mujeres, you can. So in the margarita-hued light of dawn, as the returning fishermen are enjoying a 6am beer on the docks, we take their places in the boats and head out. And an hour later we’ve found our leviathan; the snorkels and flippers go on, and we go in.
Whoever started calling whale sharks “gentle giants” had obviously never floated in the water in front of one (and certainly wasn’t a zooplankton, several million of which they devour every day). With that Jaws dorsal fin, that machete-sharp tail, that constant swaying, swaggering, menacing movement through the water, they’re unmistakably sharks. And it doesn’t matter how many times your guide tells you they can’t swallow anything bigger than their golfball-sized throats: when these 10m monsters swim towards you, their great mouths wide open, a word bubbles unbidden to the surface of your mind, and that word is Jonah.
mind, and that word is Jonah. Then they swim, unfussed, right past you, and suddenly they’re the peaceful, placid, curious creatures you’ve heard about. Fear dissolves and all that’s left is wide-eyed humbled wonder.
If you don’t want to stay with all the American college students weekending in Isla Mujeres or Cancún, follow the Race across the World-ers south. The competitors crossed into Belize and Guatemala on their way towards Colombia, but I got no further than Tulum – just 90 minutes down the Mexican coast. It’s also a popular holiday destination, but very different from Cancún: here the tourist strip is a boho little village of boutique hotels, beach clubs, juice bars and yoga joints, where you can still rent a thatched shack for £70 a night. And there happens to be a millennium-old complex of amazing Mayan ruins here, whereas Cancún has a KFC. The site is less atmospheric than some others in the area (Chichén Itzá is massive, Cobá half-hidden in jungle, and both are worth a day trip), but it has the added bonus of being sited on the most delectable little beach. Even better, just offshore is an ancient underwater place of congregation for turtles and manta rays, every bit as elegant (but not nearly as scary) as whale sharks. All you need is a snorkel, or a few pesos to hire one.
You’ll also want a snorkel at Gran Cenote, just ten minutes out of town. Cenotes are the water-filled caverns and sinkholes that pockmark this part of Mexico. They range from bath-size to mile-wide; some sitting at the side of the road for anyone to dive into, others built up into sprawling theme parks. But what they all have in common is alluringly cool, enticingly clear, bewitchingly blue and irresistibly swimmable water.
At this one, teenagers from the nearby towns laze and flirt on the hammocks and lawns, and steps descend into a sinkhole. Caves lead off it in all directions, with sweet little bats roosting upside-down on the roofs, and even sweeter little turtles pottering in their waters. It’s a lovely and intriguing swim, but with that snorkel you can peek underwater and have your mind thor[1]oughly blown. Beneath the surface is an uncanny underworld, a netherworld where the stalactites you saw drooping from the roof are now stalagmites rising from the floor, or columns holding up the roof (or is it the floor?).
Through some trick of the eerily suffusing blue light, or the crystalline-clear water, or the refractions of sound and sightlines, you feel you’ve travelled upside-down through the looking glass to the sort of inverted augmented alternate reality that Hollywood spends billions of FX dollars to create – but for just a £5 entry fee.
Later, basking on my hotel’s Caribbean-facing beach with a beer and a burrito, I look around for anyone who might want to kidnap me for a couple of weeks…
Celebrity Race across the World - Thursday 8.00pm BBC1