One of the reasons why we are here in Merida instead of being in Cancun in the Carribean, is the fact that Iratxe is obsessed with flamingos. So today was the big day of flamingo-watching. We had a big breakfast at the hotel and walked 8 blocks to the bus station. It was exactly like the rest of the city. Old, falling apart, a little communist, but with the Virgin of Guadalupe on the wall, decorated with colorful Christmas lights and plastic flowers. In general, however, the city looked a little more friendly at daylight.
The bus-drive to Celestun took 2,5 hours and was pretty cold and uncomfortable. Outside, the temperature gave us a premonition of how the rest of the day would be – hot. Iratxe and Susana entertained a whole bunch of little kids on the bus and we arrived 11:30 at the Río de Celestun, where the flamingos live. We took a little boat thought the mangrove lake and to different places with more flamingos. In total there are about 4000 flamingos in the swamp right now, in high season there are up to 40.000 of them.
They were standing around in the low water, sticking their heads into the shallow salty-sweet, red water to get some more shrimp and maintain their pink colour. I learned that flamingos cannot swim and that the water is red because of the red mangrove trees that expulse red coloring in raining season (although the theory of crocodile-eaten tourists’ blood as the source of the red colour is a little more interesting).
After watching the flamingos for a while, the boat took us deep into the enormous mangrove forest towards an “eye of water”, a sweet water spring in the middle of the the swamp. The water here was even more intensely red than before and we drove through several mangrove “roads” with the sound of exotic animals around us but without seeing any crocodiles this time. At the spring, we could take a bath in the middle of the mangrove jungle in the bloody red water. A tourist had been attacked by a crocodile at this very spot not long ago because she had mistaken the animal for a piece of wood and stepped on it. So, just in case, I didn’t touch anything under water.
After the wet refreshment, we were taken back to the shore and walked towards the village of Celestun from there. Now, it was really incredibly hot and we walked between the road and some still mangrove swamps for over a Kilometer until we could see the sea. The village was very simple and poor, not touristy at all, a little dirty and falling apart.
To our surprise, it was even hotter on the beach than inside the village. The turquoise water called for us while we were looking for a shady spot on the white beach. Bars wanted to charge us 150 pesos just for a table with an umbrella, men were staring a little too much, it was a little too hot, and the sea didn’t have anything interesting to offer (no waves, no fish, no rocks) so all in all I got bored pretty quickly. In the end, we got a table and a cold drink and finally fell into the sea, which was warm too, of course, but still refreshing in comparison to the outside temperature.
We didn’t stay longer than an hour and took the bus back to Merida at 3. It was as uncomfortable as the first one and it was still really hot when we got there at almost 6. I tried to get some gluten free stuff at a supermarket but failed and was on a direct way towards desperation because of extreme starvation. Thinking of tomorrow’s excursion, in the end I went to the cook at our hotel and convinced him of cooking me some rice for takeaway in my Tupper box. After this, we went out for dinner. We tried a traditional Mexican restaurant that our taxi driver had recommended but they firmly refused to cook for me, so we went straight back to the vegan restaurant from yesterday. This time, I had a Morocco menu with 4 dishes and it was delicious again. A little wind came up and blew through the palm trees around us and the temperature was actually very nice. In general, the heat here in Yucatan is much more bearable than in Mazunte because it’s much less humid.
We enjoyed dinner at this beautiful place and got out at 8:30, just in time to hurry to the main square and watch the friday night video mapping show on the church, which was really cool.
We were at the hotel at 9 and jumped into the pool for a little cool-off (this made 3 swims in different types of water for today) and stayed in the pool for almost an hour. I stayed in afterwards to relax, write, and draw in the patio.
As a general Update about this trip, I can say that since about a week ago I feel like I have finally arrived in my “travel mode” and am completely able to enjoy the experience. The group has also gotten used to each other and is now “tuned” as a team, even though I feel like we split up right when everything began to work well. The smaller group of three we are now is also working very well and a little more agile than with 7 people.
