Dzilam de Bravo

Dzilam de Bravo is a fishing port of 2,455 people (2020 census) on Yucatán's north coast, the last town on the coastal highway that runs east from Progreso, about an hour and a half by car from Mérida. It sits between the beach village of Santa Clara to the west and the estuaries of the Bocas de Dzilam to the east, about 13 kilometers north of its parent town, Dzilam González. The name comes from the Maya dzilam, "peeled" or "stripped bare". A white lighthouse stands near the seafront, and the malecón runs along the harbour where the boats come in.

The port has a long history. Francisco de Montejo the elder landed here in 1531 during his campaign to conquer the peninsula, and for most of the colonial period this was simply the port of Dzilam González. Later the coast became a refuge for pirates, and the best-known story in town is that the French corsair Jean Lafitte died here around 1821 and was buried in the local cemetery. Historians have never confirmed it; local tradition says the old seaside cemetery was destroyed by a hurricane, and a tombstone for Lafitte stands at a monument known as Las Tres Cruces, put up in his memory in 1961. The port belonged to the municipality of Dzilam González until 25 December 1921, when it became a municipality and took the name Dzilam de Bravo.

East of town begins the Reserva Estatal de Dzilam, decreed in 1989 and covering about 69,000 hectares, including a marine strip, across the municipalities of Dzilam de Bravo and San Felipe; it is also a Ramsar wetland of international importance. Mangrove covers about two-thirds of it, and inside lies Isla Cerritos, a small island that served as the sea port of Chichén Itzá between about 800 and 1100, with a 330-meter stone breakwater built by the Maya.

Visitors come for the boat trips run by local cooperatives. Typical stops are Punta Arena, a quiet beach at the far end of the trip; the Chacaltún rocks, for shallow snorkeling among fish; Xbuya Há, a freshwater spring that bubbles up through the sea with a strong current; and Cenote Elepetén, a freshwater pool in the mangroves reached by a long boardwalk. Longer trips go to the Río Angosto lagoon and the Bocas de Dzilam, where flamingos, herons and egrets feed and crocodiles rest on the banks, and some operators offer camping in the Bocas, night trips to see bioluminescence, and trolling for fish that ends as ceviche. Fishing, especially for octopus and shark, is still the town's living.