How to get to Rio Lagartos and Ek Balam in a daytrip DIY

First things first, if you have a car, you can easily combine Rio Lagartos and Ek Balam and even visit the cenote at Ek Balam. By public transport it’s possible but stressful to do it in one day, as there unfortunately isn’t any direct connection to Ek Balam from Rio Lagartos. Therefore, I’d recommend to plan one day for each of it. Here is how you can fit both into a day anyway.

From Valladolid to Rio Lagartos

Get one of the earliest possible buses from Valladolod to Tizimin. I left at 6.45 am with Oriente Express for 30 pesos and the journey took about one hour.

Tizimin is a lively town that has quite a few small food options around the station but I was only interested in how to get to Rio Lagartos as quick as possible. Unfortunately, there are very few buses going there and so you have to ask for the collectivos that are situated one block to the right from the bus station. It just so happened that 3 people in a yellow taxi were looking to go to Rio Lagartos and since the taxi was full with me, off we were on the 45-minute ride. It cost 50 pesos. Just as much as the normal collectivo.

Boat tour at Rio Lagartos

Finding a group

I was hoping that I could join other people for a boat tour once I arrived there. You can haggle it down to 500 pesos if you are on your own. 200 per person if you are four people. However, I was the only tourist along the water. Unfortunately, the only tourists that were arriving had already booked a complete tour and therefore didn’t have any interest in taking me with them. That was when I started to realize that it wouldn’t be so easy to find a group who might be here by car and then could take me back to Ek Balam with them. Rio Lagartos is a dead end and everybody has to head back toward Tizimin anyways.

At least the harbor workers were very nice. One of them organized that I could join an organized group tour in about 50 minutes. In the meantime they brought me to a place where I could eat some empanadas.

2 hour boat tour at Rio Lagartos – a must do

Finally, I could hop on to the small longboat that had space for about 8 people. I was joined by a Chiness family from North Carolina and their guide. Luckily our boat had a sunprotection unlike most of the other boats. Our captain also brought a few dead fish aboard that he later fed to the birds.

The tour starts with an about 45-minute ride through a nice green scenerey up the river. We made stops to take pictures of different big birds like pelicans. Sometimes you are also lucky enough to see a crocodile but we didn’t see one.
The next stop is a little further up the river and you might already see the pink hue on the horizon. Or smell them. flamingos live up here and it’s cool to see them in the wilderness! The captain said that they are so pink because they eat a certain kind of algae that grows here which brings me to the next highlight on the tour.

The pink lake at Rio Lagartos

Behind a sand well the water suddenly is not green anymore but a red-brown and if the sun shines directly into it it’s really pink!
In the background you can see the saline and they have built the water channels in a way that it never dries out where the algae is but can evaporate where they are gaining the salt. It was pretty neat to see such a vast area of water being pink and that having happend naturally.

The Mayan mud bath

Our captain took a bucket of mud/sand out of the green side of the river and then we started our journey back to the marina. Most people put the mud on their arms and face on the boat ride back, so that it can dry for 15 minutes. Then, they’d wash it off at the beach at the open sea a little past the marina where we got on in the morning. However, we covered our whole bodies once we reached the white beach and then hung out there for a few minutes until the mud was dry, upon which we washed it off again in the sea water.
The complete tour took 2 hours and was a much better value than the one in Muyil.

How to get from Rio Lagartos to Ek Balam

Now it was already 12.45 but unfornately the guide of the Chinese family didn’t allow me to hitch a ride with them to Ek Balam although they were going there as well. The family was fine with it but the guide wasn’t so open. Well, nothing I could do about that and so I had to take the collectivo. They told me that they would leave at 1.20 but in the end we drove around town a few times until the collectivo filled up and it was 1.45. I wasn’t sure whether Ek Balam was open until 4 or 5 (it’s open until 5) and so didn’t even know whether I could still enter the site. I tried nevertheless.

From Tizimin to Ek Balam

Even after speaking to several people the answer still remained the same that I would have to return to Valladolid and then get another collectivo from there to the ruins. But I’d lose at least an hour through that and then the ruins would be closed for sure.

Finally, a driver of a yellow collectivo taxi brought me to the crossroad to Ek Balam for 35 pesos. From there it would be 7 km to the ruins and collectivos would stop along the road to take me there. So, I started walking but nobody stopped! That got quite depressing after a while since it was getting close to 4 pm and I wasn’t sure whether the ruins would be open and it was hot as hell as well. Eventually, with the help of about three different locals, I got there. Probably it was too late for collectivos heading this direction at this time of day.

The ruins at Ek Balam

Luckily, the ruins were open until 5 and I had about 50 minutes to visit them. The site is not big and so that was just enough but the best thing was that there were hardly any tourists left in the park. The Chinese family from my boat was just about to leave as well. Plus, everything looked really nice in the soft light of late afternoon.

Climbing the pyramids

The cool thing about Ek Balam is that you can still climb on the pyramids. It gave me a little vertigo going up and down the steep steps. However, the view over the jungle and the other pyramids is amazing! In addition the main pyramid was very nicely ornamented. It really is a work of art.

Visiting Ek Balam

The entry fee is 132 Pesos. If you want to have an easy trip by public transport there is take the ADO bus leaving Valladolid at 8 a.m. It Returns at 12 noon for 80 pesos roundtrip.
I was lucky that there were three French girls who also traveled by collectivo. So, we could head back to Valladolid together for 50 pesos per person.

It was a long day with many impressions. It’s definitely worth to visit both Rio Lagartos and Ek Balam. Yet, if you have enough time, do it in two days (if you don’t have a car). Rather relax at a cenote in Valladolid for the rest of the day.

Have you seen any natural phenomenon like pink lakes? Comment below this post.