April 9, 2008 - Celestun

Heading almost directly west from Merida for an hour or so, you come to a different part of the Gulf coast and a sleepy (well 'sound asleepy' is more accurate) town called Celestun. This is just south of a biosphere and bird estuary where many of the flamingos live and breed and eat 12 hours a day. The town is nothing in particular, but the coast line is lovely white sand beach, with not much development yet, and the flamingos are just not to be believed.
See a few of the photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/necshs1/CELESTUN.
We stayed in a B&B that Grant and Clifford found called Casa de Celeste Vida and thoroughly enjoyed meeting one of the owners, Karen, and her six cocker spaniels and one loving overseer of a dog who answers to either Baby or Sexy, depending on her mood (www.celestevida.ca). Having found the B&B, we went into town for lunch (where we saw a gaggle of nuns walking on the beach with parasols) and then spent the afternoon reading and snoozing in hammocks by the beach with a little beach walking or sand castle building, too. Drinks and dinner and to bed early so we could be ready early the next morning.
We hired a boat (launcha) which has a canopy over it to help keep the sun at bay, especially at midday, and it picked us up at our B&B to head out for an adventure. At this time of year, the flamingos are nesting and mating and so they congregate either in Celestun or in Rio Lagartos (north and east of Merida and a longer car journey). We not only saw flamingos galore, but also we saw a beautiful fresh water pool, mangrove forests up close and personal, and a petrified forest (which died about a hundred years ago when the water level changed and the fresh water which had been feeding the trees was overrun by the salt water from the Gulf). The estuary is 123 kilometers long from south to north and the southern 23 kilometers that interact with the Gulf every day are a muckier-looking green. There are crocodiles in this area but our guide said that they have plenty of birds and fish to eat so are not interested in humans in boats, for which we gave thanks. The flamingos are not only beautiful and gangly, but also such fun to watch. We could have spent hours watching them eat (they cock their heads upside down to suck the food into their throats), mate (they hop on and are off pretty quick), fly (they run ON the water until they have enough speed to get up off the water), and gather. There were several herds of these adolescent birds making quite a racket -- very entertaining!!
When we got back to Merida, the temperature was 102 degrees, much hotter than at the beach with the wind blowing. Summer is about a month early this year.