Celestun

Our first trip was to Celestun,a small fishing town east of Merida.  We took a second class bus for the ride. Great ride, stopping at all the small towns along the way.  The bus station was an easy walk from our hotel. Ed used his Senior Card so his one way fare was 23 pesos. Peggy’s was not a cheap date at 49 pesos($4)!

Celestun known for its long and wide beach and millions of smaller shells. The water is shallow and extends out for well over a quarter mile with a depth of only about 2 feet. Fresh seafood is plentiful at the beach front restaurants. It’s also known for its flamingo estuary.

Here’s the beach. Amazing. Hardly any people.We enjoyed a good lunch with some Canadian folks we met while walking on the beach.

 

There are boats on the beach that fit 6 or 8 people that will take you to the flamingos. They go down for a few miles and then up the ria (which is not really a ria or river at all) into the estuary. After a few miles you begin to see long ribbons of orange/pink color. Then, the ribbons become flamingos. Tens of thousands of them. All feeding in the shallow murky water. Walking and squeezing the shrimp larvae out of the ooze. Amazing.

The next picture is just meant to give an idea of the area just this one section of the flamingos cover.  You can just see the hint of pink in front of the trees.

 

Then, we stopped at the mangroves. We cut through a section to see how the roots grow into the water. No crocodiles, but they’re there!

Finally we stopped at one source of the ria. It’s a fresh water spring that is bubbling up, forming a clear pool where you can swim. It then empties out into the large estuary.  We didn’t swim but lots of folks did.

Then, back to the road leading into town.  We just flagged down the bus for the 2 1/2 hour ride back to Merida.   As it happened to us after dinner at Chaya Maya, the bus encountered the Carnaval parade route and had to take a very similar route down, over, and then back up to the station. Amazingly, we remembered many of the same narrow streets and vehicles parked along the streets causing bottlenecks. Only this time, this huge bus had to navigate rather than just walking around. Traffic jams and other buses playing “chicken” resulted. Several times the corners we so tight that the us had to stop, back up, and then turn again. The squeezes between vehicles (parked or passing) were sometimes so tight, we held our breath! No scrapes. No bruises. No one injured or killed. We clapped for the driver as we finally entered the station!