🇲🇽 Mexico · The South
Montebello Lakes National Park is one of the most magical landscapes in Chiapas: dozens of lakes hidden among pine forest and jungle, on the border with Guatemala, each one a different color. Turquoise, emerald, bottle green, deep blue and even near-black tones are spread among the lakes according to their depth, the minerals in the water and the vegetation on the bottom, creating a palette that looks painted. It's the first national park in Chiapas and one of the oldest in Mexico.
The route takes you to the most famous lakes: Lake Montebello, Lake Bosque Azul (with its 'Grutas' caves and the 'Paso del Soldado'), the Lakes of Colors (Encantada, Ensueño, Esmeralda, Agua Tinta), Lake Pojoj —crossed on log rafts to reach an islet— and Lake Tziscao, the largest, which touches the Guatemalan border. Between one lake and the next there are trails, lookouts, forest and local communities offering raft rides, kayaks, food and lodging.
Near the park there are other attractions usually added to the visit: the Maya archaeological site of Chinkultic, perched over a lake, and the imposing El Chiflón waterfalls, on the San Vicente river. This guide covers how to get there from Comitán or San Cristóbal, the official national park (CONANP) and community fees, the raft and kayak rides, the best time to go and the tips for touring this border corner of Chiapas, where water becomes a mosaic of colors.
The Montebello Lakes formed on limestone terrain through the dissolving action of water, which created cavities and sinkholes that later filled with water, in a karst landscape. Their colors come from the depth, the minerals and the vegetation of each lake. The area, inhabited by Maya peoples (Tojolabal and others), was declared a National Park in 1959, the first in Chiapas. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The southeasternmost province, of jungle, mountains and living Maya cultures: land of Palenque and Pakal the Great, of colonial San Cristóbal, of the Sumidero Canyon and of the 1994 Zapatista uprising.
Read the history of Chiapas →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Picture a pine forest where, around every bend, a mirror of water appears in an impossible color: turquoise here, emerald a few meters further on, near-black ink blue right beside it. The Montebello Lakes are not a retouched postcard; they're a real geological phenomenon, and their secret lies underground. The region is limestone terrain where water, over millennia, has dissolved the rock, creating a karst landscape full of cavities, sinkholes and depressions. When those depressions filled with rainwater and underground springs, they gave rise to the set of lakes that dot the park today, usually put at around 50 or 60.
The limestone not only formed the basins; it also shapes one of the park's most astonishing features: the enormous variety of color in its lakes. The color of each one depends on several combined factors: the depth (the deepest tend toward intense blues), the minerals dissolved in the water, the nature of the bottom and the aquatic vegetation, and the way light penetrates and reflects. So neighboring lakes can show completely different tones, from turquoise to emerald, from deep blue to near-black or wine, like Lake Agua Tinta.
This mosaic of colored waters, framed by pine-oak forest and mountain jungle, at some 1,500 meters of altitude and next to the border with Guatemala, is what makes Montebello a unique place. The colors vary as well with the hour of the day, the season and the weather, so each visit offers a different picture.
The Montebello region, on the border between Chiapas and Guatemala, has been inhabited since ancient times by Maya peoples. Classic-period settlements developed in the area, such as the nearby city of Chinkultic, perched over one of the lakes, which preserves pyramids, plazas, a ball court and carved stelae, evidence of the Maya occupation of these highlands more than a thousand years ago.
Today the region is the territory of contemporary Maya peoples, mainly Tojolabal, along with Tseltal and other groups, as well as of communities formed by Guatemalan and Mexican migrants over the course of the twentieth century. These communities live around the park, working in farming, cattle raising and, increasingly, tourism, and they keep a strong cultural identity and close ties to the water and the forest.
Many of the names of the lakes and places come from Maya languages, and the local communities —like Tziscao, beside the largest lake— are today central players in running the park's tourism. The border with Guatemala, which cuts across Lake Tziscao, makes this a region of meeting and exchange between the two countries.
Montebello's exceptional natural value was officially recognized in the mid-twentieth century. On 16 December 1959, under the government of Adolfo López Mateos, the creation of Montebello Lakes National Park was decreed; it became the first national park in the state of Chiapas and one of the oldest in Mexico. The declaration sought to protect the set of lakes, the pine-oak forests and the biodiversity of this mountain area.
The park covers several thousand hectares in the municipalities of La Trinitaria and La Independencia and shelters remarkable biological wealth: conifer and oak forests, mountain jungle, orchids and wildlife that includes birds, mammals and aquatic species. It is administered by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP).
On top of its national importance comes an international recognition: the Montebello Lakes are among the Ramsar sites (wetlands of international importance), for the value of their bodies of water and associated ecosystems. That double protection underlines the park's ecological relevance, beyond its unquestionable scenic beauty.
The oldest evidence of human presence in the region is Chinkultic, a Maya city perched over a lake a few kilometers from the colored lakes. Its name is usually translated as 'stepped cenote' or 'covered well', in reference to the deep cenote (the Chanujabab lake) on whose rim the acropolis was raised. Chinkultic flourished above all between the years 600 and 900 AD, in the Maya Late Classic, and came to have pyramids, plazas, a ball court and numerous stelae carved with Maya long count dates: one of them, Stela 8, bears one of the latest dates recorded in the Maya area. From the top of its acropolis, the view takes in the lakes and the forest as far as the sierra, in one of the loveliest scenes in southern Chiapas.
After the collapse of the great Maya cities, the region was left as a remote area of highlands and forest. In the colonial era, this border corner of southern Chiapas —then part of the Captaincy General of Guatemala until Chiapas joined Mexico in 1824— was a marginal territory, thinly populated, of Tojolabal Indigenous towns and scattered cattle haciendas. The name 'Montebello' itself ('monte bello' or 'monte hermoso', beautiful mountain) is relatively modern and reflects the admiring gaze on this mountain landscape.
Over the twentieth century, the area received waves of settlers: Mexican families looking for land and also Guatemalan migrants, especially in the decades of conflict in the neighboring country. The community of Tziscao, beside the largest lake, was born in part of those population movements along the border line. In this way the Montebello region took shape as a human mosaic with Maya roots and a living border, where the line between Mexico and Guatemala literally cuts a lake in two.
Today the Montebello Lakes are one of the best-loved natural destinations in Chiapas and a magnet for visitors touring southeastern Mexico. Tourism is largely organized by the local communities, which run the entrances to the different areas of the park, the raft and kayak rides, the eateries, the crafts and the lodging, in a community ecotourism model that is a source of income for the region.
The visit is usually built into a circuit combining the lakes with other nearby attractions: the Chinkultic archaeological site, perched over its lake, and the imposing El Chiflón waterfalls, on the San Vicente river, with their 'Velo de Novia' drop. Comitán de Domínguez, a colonial city of great charm, is the usual base for exploring this whole part of southern Chiapas.
Montebello's great challenge is conservation. In recent decades, some of its lakes have suffered pollution problems and changes in the quality and the color of the water, attributed to farming in the basin, the use of agrochemicals and deforestation, which set off alarms about the health of the park. The authorities and the communities are working on measures to reverse the damage. For the visitor, that reinforces the importance of responsible tourism: respect the rules, don't pollute and support the conservation efforts for one of the most extraordinary landscapes in Mexico.