The Failed Adventure to Celestun

From Uxmal, we consulted out "trusty" Guia Roji (Mexican road atlas) and saw what appeared to be a shortcut to Celestun.  It appeared as a yellow road on the map, and yellow roads are generally okay...or so we thought.

Here is a Google map of what we were attempting.  We had no idea that Google classified this as a nearly-invisible-gray-road. This is how Google classifies the dirt road my family lives on back home...and that dirt road is of way higher quality than this road was. The town of Sinkeuel sounds oddly like the English word Sinkhole...interesting foreshadowing....

Here we are just bouncing, literally, down the one of Mexico's worst back roads.   We came across a local on a bicycle who flagged us down and told us we should turn back because the road was flooded ahead.  He said it went all the way up to his ankle (oh the horror!).  Laughing, and comfortable in our SUV, we continued, laughing at the guy on the bike as we splashed through puddles which we mistakenly thought he was referring to.  Then it appeared in the distance....

That looks a lot like a flood in the distance.....

 Well crap.  We watched a local cross this flood on a bicycle, and thought maybe the SUV could manage...we made it about to that island before we realized it was way too deep, backed out and headed back, ashamed and defeated.  This was about 20 miles into the terrible road, and we are pretty sure that the highway to Celestun was just on the other side of this flood.  Curses!

On the way back we saw one of these massive birds.  It was at least as big as the car.  We didn't get a picture because we were all in shock.  It landed about 10 feet from the car, poked around in the swamp for a minute, then flew away.  Further research determined that this was a rare Jaribu Stork (not a goose, as an "expert" tried to tell us later).  They are rarely viewed on that side of the Yucatan, so at least we got to see a weird bird, right?

After our defeat, we returned to B's house to regroup, when the tail ends of Tropical Storm Lee hit Merida.  It was only about 40 minutes worth of storm, but it was enough to flood some streets, knock out power, rip off some branches and scare away the flamingos, as we would learn the next day.  We were all just happy not to be on "that road" when the storm hit.