Travel: "Mayan Riviera" Bonefish

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Beyond booking a week at Casa Blanca, Pesca Maya, Boca Paila or one of the other, there are plenty of opportunities for the more adventurous bonefisher in the Mexican coast between Tulum and Ascension Bay. In the Dallas Morning News, Christine Peterson reports on a recent trip with her guide-husband to Xcalak, a tiny town just seven miles north of the Belize border. “After more than 30 hours on a bus across and down the Yucatán Peninsula, and an hourlong taxi ride down highway and dirt road, we find Xcalak. Casa Carolina, our home for the next five days, is a four-room hotel with a palm-covered breakfast house by day and bar by night. A thin, wooden dock stretches into the ocean with two small chairs perched on the end.”
Steven Rinella’s 2001 article in Outside magazine on fishing on the cheap is still a good reference point for those wanting to begin exploration of the south Yucatan. “After I’d gone quite a ways, I found a dead bonefish as big as a loaf of French bread lying in the dust on the side of the road. A guy hauling bananas and limes finally stopped. When we got to a good-looking area I banged on the back window of the truck. He wouldn’t let me out until he counted the bundles of fruit to see if any were missing.”