Finally, Celestun!

We got up Sunday morning determined to make it to Celestun.  Celestun is in a bio-reserve where hundreds of flamingos live, and I really really wanted to see them.  To me flamingos have always been some strange oddity that live in zoos and in Las Vegas.  But here in Mexico, they live in the wild (!!) and tourists can hire a boat to see them (!!!).  We made our way (on the highway this time) to Celestun, paid our $750 pesos and took a private 1 hour boat ride.  Upon embarkation, our guide informed us that the tropical storm in the Gulf had scared all the flamingos away, so we wouldn't be seeing any today.  NOOOOOOOOO!!!  I guess I have a good reason to come back.

Here is a map of where we were headed, minus the flamingo attractions.

Venturing out into the Ria, we get our first glimpse of the mangroves.

Here we are at Bird Island.  See them circling and plotting??

Here the birds are sitting in a tree having a secret meeting.  The water is very shallow in this channel,  and according to our guide, it is red because of the rainy season.  Interesting. 

Mangroves against the red water.

I'm on a boat.  Oh yeah.

As we floated along, our guide, whom I might add was operating the motor on the boat by touching loose wires to a car battery whenever he wanted to go faster, took a sharp left into that small opening, and took us straight into the mangroves...shortly after telling us that the crocodiles go into these types of openings to hide from the boats...hmmm....

And here we go onto our mangrove adventure.  The guide said this was a completely natural path through the mangroves...perfectly boat-sized, and not at all suspicious.

In here the pictures got really interesting.  The water is no more than 3 feet deep, and the color of blood.  Mixed with the starkness of the mangrove roots, it makes for some pretty haunting imagery.

Kinda spooky....

Alright, here we are back on the open water.  Here there are 2 giant birds that look tiny in the picture.  Do not be fooled!

Here we stopped at the Ojo de Agua.  This is a natural freshwater spring, one of many in this interesting biosphere.  People (not us) were swimming in the coffee colored water here.  They were drinking heavily while doing it, probably so they could forget that they might be eaten by a crocodile at any moment.  Even the Ojo de Agua sign has a picture of a flamingo on it.  :(

There's the Ojo right there!

This is a termite house.  Yuck!!

Many tiny fish babies lived in the warm shallow red waters surrounding the Ojo.  Seemed like a pretty protected little spot for them.

Here we are in the mangrove forest!

One last view straight up before we head back to the docks.

After the boat ride we headed to the beach for some lunch.  We encountered this sign as we walked out.  An important reminder for everyone.  It also begs the question, if a sign such as this is not present, is it okay to "do your needs" on the beach??

I would like to note that no one ordered the "Conch blue crap".

The white sand beach at Celestun, on the Gulf of Mexico.  Beautiful!

Here is a delicious Gulf white fish taco, prepared Yucatecan style.  Unfortunately...this taco, and others like it at the table, would give all three of us gnarly food poisoning on Monday night/Tuesday...but in the moment, it certainly was delicious. 

B and I enjoying the beach before heading to Progresso (a different beach...this beach was clearly just for show and not swimming!) to enjoy the rest of our afternoon.

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.