We got married on Isla Mujeres and decided to honeymoon in Xcalak. We are divers and the diving is touted as being great and we wanted to explore a new part of mexico. Going from Isla to Xcalak was quite a difference. It took about a day to adjust to being so remote, but once we did it was quite nice.

ROOM: We stayed in one of the upstairs rooms with a tiny fridge. The room at Tierra Maya was clean as was the bathroom. Luckily there was a pretty heavy breeze all week which made sleeping much more comfortable, and there were mosquito coils in our room that were much appreciated. Beds and pillows very uncomfortable (quite hard) but i've yet to find a very cozy bed while traveling through mexico, even the resort on Isla had uncomfy beds.

GROUNDS: not much to them, but since we were the only guests most of the time there we had free reign over the hammocks and chairs.

STAFF: friendly, but I sorta felt like I was getting in the way of their summer vacation/break.

FOOD: eh. okay. breakfast is included which is great, but it wasn't that tasty (fruit slices w/ pre-frozen? pineapple, coffee, and some sort of pound cake). We never had the opportunity to eat lunch there, as the cook was never in at that time of day. We ate dinner there once. Dinner portions are pretty big, but also sorta pricy. The food situation was a little odd, they didnt want to bring the cook in because we were the only ones there (understandable) but it was sorta hard to figure out if there would be a cook (food) there on a given day. If they were so concerned I suggest they put a white board in the dining room so guests could sign up for specific meals.

XCALAK: great diving (we used XTC) and snorkeling. Very limited dining, I mean VERY limited. Tierra Maya (not open most of the week), Costa de Cocos (got frozen shrimp on my pizza; food was okay), Toby's (eh, okay, nothing special), and The Leaky Palapa (Delicious!! but only open 2x per week).

In the future I think i'd shorten my time in Xcalak (we stayed 9 days) to 3-4 and then travel around. We did a day trip to Bacalar (very pretty water and the fort was cool) and saw the ruins at Chacchoben (small but neat). Also went to Majahual for dinner a few times, it was a little more lively.

We enjoyed our stay, just don't think it's on the top of the must-return-here list