Playa del Carmen Hosts 5th Mexican Snake Festival to Dispel Myths

Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo — Playa del Carmen will host the fifth Mexican Snake Festival on July 11, a free event aimed at educating the public about the importance of snakes and dispelling common myths.

The festival will take place at Parque La Ceiba and nearby locations from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., featuring conferences, workshops, and exhibits led by natural science experts.

Cenotes Urbanos, the citizen science collective organizing the event, invited the community to attend as part of its “Noches del Inframundo” program, which has been running for over two years.

At 6:30 p.m., biologist Roberto Rojo, founder of the collective, will present “Snakes in Caves” at Pook, cocina de milpa y brasas, located on Avenida 31 Sur with Diagonal 80 in the Ejidal neighborhood. Rojo has conducted extensive field research on snake species and regularly gives lectures.

Other speakers include Raúl Padilla, who at 11 a.m. will discuss “Snake Identification: Knowledge for Prevention and Respect,” and paleontologist Jerónimo Avilés Olguín, who at 2 p.m. will address “The Evolution of Snakes and the Fossil Snake of Quintana Roo.”

Simultaneous workshops will focus on snake identification, including one led by Enrique Valdez at 2 p.m. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., there will be an exhibition of drawings and photos related to species conservation in Playa del Carmen and the Yucatan Peninsula.