Hi there,
The first time we were in Mexico, we went from Tulum to Bacalar. We had planned to spend one night since we were only going to see the lagoon of 7 colors there.
In that month that we were touring the country, as it was low season, we selected a few hotels that were relatively close, then we went to see them personally. In addition, in this way we didn’t pay taxes. With a few exceptions, this is how it was cheaper.
We arrived by bus to Bacalar. It left us on a road and it seemed like no man’s land.
We had selected hotels that were not attached to the lagoon because it seemed to us from the photos that everything was crowded.
We started walking and the first option we had to see was the Ek’Balam Hotel. When we arrived, you can’t imagine the laughter. From the outside it was evident that it was not finished, and the doors were made of boards.
We went in to ask and there was a very old man at the reception. The lady who was cleaning showed us the room since he couldn’t walk very well let alone climb stairs. It was new and immaculate.
The man called his wife and since he was a bit deaf, he had the volume of the phone very high, and we heard the entire conversation. The woman told him to accept the reservation because they needed the money, to tell us 650 pesos and to lower it to 600 if we bargained.
We left our things in the room which was horribly hot and without the possibility of putting on the air conditioning because there was no electricity in all Bacalar.
We went to the lagoon, which was a 25-minute walk away.
We spent the afternoon touring the center and the different public accesses that were there. Then we bought veggies to make a salad at the hotel (we were already a bit tired from so many tacos).
We arrived and the girl who had shown us the room had already left.
The air conditioning did not turn on and we hassled for a while to find the problem with Héctor who from below was indicating which switches to move for electricity.
We sat down for dinner with him.
Hector told us that he and his wife had always lived in Mexico City and that they had moved to Bacalar now that they were retired to build that hotel, which had been their lifelong dream. The project had been left halfway because they had run out of money and at that time his wife was in Mexico City selling her apartment to finish the construction.
He said that it was very difficult to work with the Mexicans because they were very lazy, they worked whatever hours they wanted, and they worked very slowly. Hector had designed the hotel because he was an architect, but he showed us that the workers had left everything wrong.
When he was young, he traveled many countries for work, he had lived in Africa and Venezuela.
When we told him that we were going to Calakmul, he told us that it was beautiful and that he highly recommended it to us. He told us the difference between that jungle and the one in Guatemala, where he had also been.
Hector remembered with nostalgia what Bacalar was like before, when it wasn’t surrounded and crowded with hotels. He told us that before there were even manatees but that, with so much tourism and pollution, many species had disappeared.
We finished dinner and went to our room. We were amazed that we were going to sleep in a hotel that had no doors and where there was no one, just Hector and us.
The next morning, we had breakfast, said goodbye to Hector and went to catch our bus to Xpujil.
We always remember him and his hotel, from what I’ve seen on the internet, it seems that they already finished it and it’s working.
Here is the link of the hotel:
https://www.google.com/travel/hotels/entity/CgoIqMa998Lr5v4MEAE