Lagos de Montebello: The 59 Lakes Near Comitán
If you're already based in Comitán de Domínguez, chasing waterfalls at El Chiflón or Las Nubes, Lagos de Montebello National Park is the easiest half-day add-on in the region. It's a cluster of dozens of lakes near the Guatemala border, each one a different shade of blue, green, or near-black depending on mineral content and depth. You don't need to build a whole separate trip around it. You just need a car, a few hours, and a willingness to get your shoes muddy near the shoreline.
I've covered this park as part of a longer Comitán stay, and it's worth treating on its own terms here rather than as a footnote to El Chiflón. Below is what actually matters if you're planning the trip: the drive, the cost, which lakes deserve your time, and how to pair it with the nearby Tenam Puente ruins.
For the wider context on why Comitán makes sense as your base for this whole southern loop, see the Comitán de Domínguez guide.
Key Takeaways
- Lagos de Montebello is roughly a 45-minute drive from Comitán, doable independently by rental car or motorcycle, no tour required.
- The park is commonly cited as having 59 lakes, though the exact count shifts depending on season and how strictly a body of water counts as a distinct "lake."
- Laguna Bosque Azul is the main hub with rowboat rentals; Tziscao, Cinco Lagos, and Pojoj are worth the extra time if you have it.
- You pay twice: a CONANP park fee (about 65 pesos for Mexican nationals and residents, 125 for other foreign visitors) plus a roughly 40-peso ejido fee at the main lakes (Tziscao, Cinco Lagos, Pojoj, Montebello), so budget around 105 pesos as a national or 165 as a foreigner. Rowboat and raft rides run roughly 100-250 pesos. All cash, prices change without much notice.
- It pairs reasonably well with a visit to the Tenam Puente ruins if you leave Comitán early.
What Is Lagos de Montebello National Park?
Lagos de Montebello is a protected national park in southeastern Chiapas, sitting right up against the Guatemala border. The terrain includes limestone caves and sinkhole-like formations typical of karst topography, pine forest, and highland valley. Mineral content, depth, sediment, and algae are the factors commonly cited for why individual lakes differ so much in color — water sitting over different mineral deposits, at different depths, reflects light differently. Walk between two lakes a five-minute drive apart and you can go from turquoise to almost navy.
The park has been protected since 1959, Chiapas's first national park, and unlike some of the state's more developed attractions, it hasn't been heavily built up. Access to individual lakes is managed by the local ejido communities rather than one unified park authority, which matters for how you'll actually experience the place. More on that below.
How Many Lakes Are in Montebello National Park?
The number most commonly attached to the park, and the one in the name of this guide, is 59. That figure gets repeated across guidebooks and local signage, but treat it as a useful approximation rather than a precise, current headcount. Some of the smaller lakes are seasonal, shrinking or disappearing during the dry months, and where one lake ends and another begins isn't always obvious on the ground. What matters for a visitor is that you're not going to see all of them in a day, or even in several days. A dozen or so are accessible enough to matter, and a handful of those are genuinely worth stopping for.
How Do You Get to Lagos de Montebello From Comitán?
The drive from Comitán is 45 minutes to an hour depending on which lake you're headed to first, on paved Highway 190 toward Trinitaria, connecting to Highway 307 for the final stretch into the park, followed by local roads into the park itself. This is a manageable, independent drive. You do not need a guided tour to see Montebello, and I'd actively steer you away from booking one out of San Cristóbal, since that turns a half-day trip into a full day of driving before you've even reached Comitán.
Independent Drive vs. Guided Tour
A rental car or motorcycle handles this fine in dry season. The main road to the park entrance is paved; the short stretches connecting individual lakes are a mix of paved and packed dirt, passable in a standard sedan unless it's been raining hard. If you don't have your own transport, colectivos (shared vans) run from the Comitán market area toward Tziscao and the park, which is the budget option and still gets you there without a formal tour. A guided tour only makes sense if you don't want to deal with navigation, don't speak Spanish, or specifically want a boat guide who can point out which lake is which as you go.
If you want the wider menu of what's worth doing in the state before or after this trip, the full list of what's worth doing in Chiapas is a useful reference point.
What Does It Cost to Visit Lagos de Montebello?
You pay in two places. First, CONANP, the federal agency that administers the park, publishes a tiered fee schedule: 125 pesos per person per day for foreign visitors, with a 50% discount (about 65 pesos) for Mexican nationals and foreign residents and a 75% discount (about 30 pesos) for students and teachers with valid ID; children under 12, INAPAM seniors, retirees and pensioners, and people with disabilities are exempt. A 2026 news report on the updated fees confirms the same figures, tied to Mexico's Federal Duties Law, and notes a separate roughly 40-peso ejido access fee collected at the main lakes — Tziscao, Cinco Lagos, Pojoj, Internacional, and Montebello — so the realistic all-in is around 105 pesos for a national or 165 for a foreign visitor. Rowboat rental at Laguna Bosque Azul and the balsa (raft) rides at Pojoj and Cinco Lagos work less predictably: expect somewhere in the 100 to 250 peso range, sometimes priced per boat and sometimes per person depending on the vendor and lake, and the price is set on the spot rather than posted anywhere official. None of this is expensive, but bring small bills and cash. There are no card machines in the park, and Mexican national-park fees get adjusted year to year without much public notice, so treat any number here as a ballpark to confirm when you arrive.
Which Lakes Are Worth Prioritizing?
You won't get through even a fraction of 59 lakes in a day, so it helps to know where the actual payoff is.
Laguna Bosque Azul is the main entry point and the one most people see first. It's where you'll find rowboat rentals, and it's the easiest lake to reach, which also means it draws the most visitors. Worth doing, but don't stop there if you have more than a couple of hours.
Laguna Tziscao sits directly on the Guatemala border and is the most developed of the group, with lakeside comedores and cabañas if you wanted to stay over. The color here tends toward a deep, saturated blue, and it's a good spot to slow down and eat rather than rush through.
Cinco Lagos (Five Lakes) is a viewpoint reached by a short hike rather than a drive-up stop, and it's the best single vantage point if you want to see multiple color variations in one frame without needing a boat.
Laguna Pojoj has a small island in the middle of it and rowboats available, similar in setup to Bosque Azul but with noticeably fewer people.
If you're tight on time, Bosque Azul plus Cinco Lagos gives you the boat experience and the best overview in a half day. If you have a full day, add Tziscao and eat lunch there.
Is Lagos de Montebello Worth Visiting?
Yes, and specifically yes as a Comitán-based add-on rather than a standalone destination worth planning a trip around from farther away. The lakes themselves are genuinely striking, the drive is short, and the cost is close to nothing. What it's not is a full-day spectacle on the level of El Chiflón's waterfalls; it's a quieter, more spread-out kind of beautiful, and some travelers who've already seen a lot of Chiapas's lakes and cenotes find it pleasant rather than essential. If you're already in Comitán chasing the waterfalls, there's no real reason to skip it. If you're not in the area and would need to build a special trip just for this, it's a lower priority than El Chiflón or San Cristóbal.
Pairing Lagos de Montebello With Tenam Puente Ruins
The Tenam Puente ruins sit south of Comitán, a Maya site with a ballcourt and pyramid structures that gets a fraction of the visitors that Palenque does. It's not directly on the road to Montebello, so don't expect a seamless loop, but it's close enough to Comitán that you can combine the two into one long day if you leave early: ruins in the morning, lakes in the afternoon. If you'd rather not rush both, split them across two half-days instead.
Practical Tips for Visiting
Go earlier in the day if you can. Light changes how saturated the lake colors look, and midday sun tends to bring out the color contrast best. Bring cash in small denominations for entrance and boat fees. A rental car handles the roads fine in dry season; if you're visiting during heavy rain, expect the unpaved connector roads between lakes to get rougher. And don't try to see everything. Pick two or three lakes based on what you actually want, a boat ride, a viewpoint hike, a lakeside lunch, and give yourself time at each rather than rushing between all of them.
The Bottom Line
Lagos de Montebello earns its place on a Comitán-based itinerary: short drive, low cost, real payoff, and no tour required to see it properly. Treat Bosque Azul and Cinco Lagos as your minimum, add Tziscao if you have the day, and pair it with Tenam Puente if you're willing to start early. For the rest of what makes Comitán worth a night rather than a drive-through, the Comitán de Domínguez guide and the best day trips from Comitán cover the logistics, and the best time to visit Chiapas has the month-by-month read on when the lake colors are at their best.
Mason lives in Chiapas and writes masonthetraveler.com from first-hand travel through the region.
