The magical town of Bacalar is not located near the city of Cancun at all. To be exact: Bacalar is located 340 km away from the city of Cancun and the route between the cities of Puerto Morelos, Playa del Carmen, Tulum and various towns, make this distance travel between 4 hours and 30 minutes to 5 hours or even much longer.
What does the transfer time depend on? The time it takes to transfer from Cancun to Bacalar or even from Bacalar to Cancun depends a lot on the type of transfer you choose. Since there are fast ways and options and others that have very “complicated” logistics.
But don’t worry, because right now the Bacalar team will explain in detail everything you need to know to get to this incredible magical town in the state of Quintana Roo. So let’s get to it.
Distance from Cancun to Bacalar
The distance from the city of Cancun to Bacalar is 340 km and this distance is considering the departure from downtown Cancun, therefore: The distance from the Cancun airport to Bacalar is 328 km.
Distance from Puerto Morelos to Bacalar
Puerto Morelos is located 307.5 km away from the city of Bacalar. It should be noted that in Puerto Morelos there are no direct transfer services to Bacalar.
Distance from Playa del Carmen to Bacalar
The distance from the heart of the Riviera Maya or from the city of Playa del Carmen to the city of Bacalar is 274.7 km.
Distance from Akumal to Bacalar
Akumal is located 237.8 km from the magical town of Bacalar and from here you cannot take any type of direct transfer to Bacalar.
Distance from Tulum to Bacalar
The distance from the city of Tulum to Bacalar is 210 km away and the average time here to get to the city is almost 2 hours and 30 minutes.
How to get to Bacalar from Cancun
Very well, as you just realized: Bacalar is nowhere near Cancun or the Riviera Maya. You really have to travel a long distance to get to know this charming magical town of Mexico, but believe me it is well worth it. So right now we are going to know what are the direct or indirect transfer options from Cancun to Bacalar.
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Private transfer
The private transfer service is the best option of all those that exist in the city to get to Bacalar. It is a private service that is offered in a large, spacious vehicle that is also equipped with air conditioning and WIFI.
This service generally offers travel insurance and can also “pick you up” at the Cancun airport or from any place in Cancun where you are and take you to Bacalar.
Is it expensive? Actually yes, because the cost can be from 300 USD to 655 USD. But this is worth paying for. Well, this is the only means of transportation that as such will take you directly to Bacalar or more specifically to the Bacalar hotel where you want to stay.
Is this service for you? Then book your private transfer to Bacalar right now.
ADO
The ADO shared transportation service costs 566.00 MXN to travel from Cancun to Bacalar and, of course, there are other bus lines that can cost a little less, such as the Autobuses México (AU) line, which costs 466.00 MXN.
This service is shared. What does this mean? It means that you are going to travel with other people, so you can forget about privacy. But at least if it is a very economical service.
It is generally equipped with air conditioning and allows you to travel with luggage. So you don’t have to worry about it either.
What are its disadvantages? The time it takes. Normally this service makes “connections” with Playa del Carmen and Tulum, therefore it will stop at times to “upload” new passengers.
This as a consequence will make the trip a little slower, so it can take 5 hours or a little more.
Public transport
As such, there is no public transportation service that can take you from the city of Cancun to the magical town of Bacalar. However, there is a series of combinations of transfer services that “complement” each other, in order to get to Bacalar from Cancun.
However, these options are usually much more expensive (the sum total of them) than the transfer in ADO and of course, it usually has a longer transfer time than any other option. But in case you like to be adventurous, now we will tell you:
From the airport of the city of Cancun, specifically in the center of Cancun you have to take the Playa Express bus. The bus costs 55.00 MXN and its destination is Playa del Carmen.
From Playa del Carmen you have to take a foreign transfer service to Tulum and which has a cost of 55.00 MXN. The destination of this public transport is the city of Tulum.
Finally: From Tulum you can take an ADO bus or Mexico buses that cost between 300.00 MXN to 350.00 MXN to travel from Tulum to Bacalar.
As you can see, this way involves 3 means of transportation and the cost could be from 400.00 MXN to 450.00 MXN per person. It should be noted that each of these services has departure times, so this means that the time we take to get to Bacalar is much longer than normal.
Conclusion
As you can see: Bacalar is not close to Cancun but there are ways to get there, from the most comfortable to the cheapest and let’s not forget the reckless. However, whichever option you choose, we are sure that once you arrive in Bacalar, you will fall in love with it.