A Flock of Flamingos

Today was fun. I took a tour to Celestun, which is a town on the coast that has a flamingo estuary.

The day started when I walked to town this morning at 9:00 to meet the van (which got there promptly at 9:40) and when it arrived, we gathered up the others and drove about an hour to Celestun. There were eight of us in the group, and everyone was from Mexico except for a young German couple and me. It was good Spanish practice!

Once in Celestun, we took a boat ride up the wide, brackish river, surrounded by mangroves. There were a lot of familiar birds, like frigates and pelicans and I learned some good new vocab, like gaviota (seagull) and anguila pescadora, which is the word for osprey that translates, appropriately, to "eagle fisherman."

Beautiful mangrove canopy

After a while, the captain tied the boat up at the edge of some mangroves and we got out and walked on a floating boardwalk to see the flamingos. They were all pretty far off in the distance so it wasn't mind-blowing, but it was still cool to see them in the wild-- a first for me I think.

Here is the flock of flamingos. Um, yeah, I know.  

We also stopped at an ojo de agua, which directly translates to "water eye" and means a freshwater spring. It was pretty, but the spring wasn't pumping much water so no one wanted to go in the dark, stagnant water in a mangrove jungle. We moved on.

After the boat ride, we went into the town itself, which is right on the beach, and we all ate lunch (blue crab ceviche and grilled fish) at a beautiful spot with views of the turquoise gulf. It was interesting to see the Gulf of Mexico from the actual Mexican perspective! They gave us a couple of hours there after lunch so I went swimming, which was really refreshing, but weirdly no one else did. Hopefully they don't know something I don't!  :)

The beach at Celestun

All in all, it was a perfect day, and it was especially good to get out and meet some new people and socialize. I may even have found a language exchange partner, which I'm excited about. We'll see if that pans out.