Lagunas de Montebello

Lagunas de Montebello National Park was decreed in 1959 in south-eastern Chiapas, next to the Guatemalan border, and is one of the oldest national parks in southern Mexico. It protects a system of dozens of lakes — the usual figures put them at around sixty — formed by karst dissolution of the limestone, in a relief of dolines, cavities and underground rivers.

Its most celebrated feature is the range of colours of the water: turquoise, emerald, deep blue, violet or almost black according to depth, the mineral composition of the bottom, the submerged vegetation and the light. Adjoining lakes can show completely different tones, and that variety is the park's main attraction, along with formations such as the natural stone arch of El Arco.

The setting is pine-oak woodland and cloud forest, with elements of rainforest, in the transition zone between the highlands of Chiapas and the Guatemalan Petén. It holds the wildlife of that biogeographical belt, with quetzal in the cloud forests, monkeys, cats and a rich birdlife. The park's most serious conservation problem is the contamination of the lake system: several lakes have changed colour and lost their clarity over the past two decades through the input of wastewater, agrochemicals and sediment from the catchment, a deterioration documented by scientific research and still unresolved.