The Isla Mujeres coastline soon comes into view. The island is small and narrow, only about five miles long. Our ferry docks at a harbor on the west side, in front of the dolphin facility. Tourists can get their photos taken while swimming with Atlantic bottlenose dolphins or, if they're more adventurous, bull sharks.

Isla Mujeres offers your basic tropical paradise experience with palm trees and white sand. Once you leave the beaches, though, the landscape turns into quintessential rural Mexico - a few expensive homes, but primarily sunbaked cinder-block housing, with laundry hanging from windows. There's an unfinished patina to everything. Around 15,000 people live here. Most of the industry is fishing, as it has been for centuries.

Tourism is relatively new to Isla Mujeres. People come for the excellent snorkeling and diving among the coral reefs, and families gravitate to the ecofriendly Garrafon Reef Park, at the island's southern tip. A small beachfront hotel advertises "beer so cold, it'll make your teeth hurt."

To attract more visitors, travel brochures have absorbed the local pirate history. Mundaca has unwittingly loaned his name to a Mundaca travel agency, a real estate firm, and a diving company, as well as to one of the trained dolphins. From Cancun's harbor, the Captain Hook Pirate Cruise takes tour groups out on a lobster-dinner sail, complete with sword-fighting actors dressed as rogues.

Down the coastline, La Posada del Capitán Lafitte beachfront resort carries on the tradition of Louisiana pirate Jean Lafitte, who supposedly also roamed the area. The Cedam museum in Puerto Aventuras features artifacts collected from nearby shipwrecks, some dating back to the 1600s.

But it's Mundaca's history that holds the most intrigue - and it's why I'm here. With me on my visit are Carlos Mora Vega and Roger Ricardo Sauir Aguilar, two locals who work as historical guides. We climb into a vehicle and hit the few paved roads of Isla Mujeres to seek out the Mundaca legend firsthand.