mex1

CELESTUN

We drove with Deb to Celestun to visit the Refugio Faunistico De La Ria De Celestun, (the flamingo sanctuary). Celestun is on the west coast of the Yucatan peninsula and is mainly a fishing village. There's a nice beach and small beachfront restaurants.

We saw lots of fishing boats in the area. The water was really warm and a beautiful turquoise color.

We took a guided boat trip to the flamingo sanctuary.

What a sight! Thousands and thousands of beautiful pink flamingos. This is their main food and breeding area.

This place is protected by the Mexican government.

Our guide was very knowledgeable but spoke little English. Thankfully, Deb was there to translate.

The lighter colored flamingos are the youngest ones. The older the bird, the pinker it is.

Do you know why flamingos are pink? Because of all of the shrimp they eat. (No joke!)

It's sights like this that make me realize how fortunate we are to be able to travel.

There is a large grove of mangrove trees in the sanctuary. The water is shallow and it's like being in a jungle.

We asked our guide about crocodiles and he told us that they live in the mangrove area but only come out at night to hunt.

Yikes! Look what Max spotted! This guy must have been working the day-shift. Glad we weren't wading!

Not far through the mangrove forest we came to a fresh water spring. The water was crystal clear and the guide told us we could go swimming if we'd like to. There were tourists from another boat already swimming, but after Max's crocodile sighting, we decided to pass. The other swimmers didn't believe us when we told them that we had spotted one.