Punta Bachul

Punta Bachul is a gentle headland on the north coast of Yucatán, in the municipality of San Felipe, about 13 kilometers west of the western mouth of the Ría Lagartos estuary and roughly 14 kilometers along the shore from the town of San Felipe. It lies on the long, thin sand bar that separates the Gulf of Mexico from the marshes behind it, inside the area mapped as the Dzilam State Reserve. In San Felipe people simply call it "Bachul".

The cape has been a landmark for a long time. In the 16th century, Punta Bachul and Punta Arenas served the first Spanish navigators as reference points for sailing and mapping this flat, featureless coast. Offshore, freshwater springs rise from the seabed, mixing with the salt water and supporting their own mix of marine life and plants, a feature of this stretch of the Yucatán coast.

Nobody really lives here. The beach is used mostly by San Felipe's fishermen, who set up temporary camps at Bachul and at other beaches such as Chisascab during the net-fishing season. A small, half-ruined house built by fishermen, once used for religious gatherings, still stands and now serves only as shelter for campers. Until about a decade ago, San Felipe families came out by boat on the day of the Holy Cross to hear mass on the beach and share a meal, a custom that has since died out. Today the cape draws a few visitors for nature watching and the empty beach; there are no services, so treat it as a day trip with a local boatman.