I had to make some real choices when I was in Mérida and the Yucatan.  There are so many day trips available from these cities.  Many of them are two hours travel in each direction.  I also did not want to buy into hype about destinations that backpackers talked about like a paradise (see future post about San Cristóbal De Las Casas), especially when TripAdvisor can offer a wide range of realism.  For a day of beautiful nature, I chose Celestun (after doing my research).

The town of Rio Lagartos, two hours north of Valladolid and nearly impossible to get to directly, is supposed to be a magical land of pink lakes and flamingos.  The people who have been there post about it on the Internet.  I've met backpackers who have been there who refuse to show me their pictures of the magical pink lake.  Eventually I met backpackers who admitted that the sun was not right and the lake is more brown than pink and there were not that many flamingos.  I knew that Celestun would be a better idea because it is an official sanctuary.

I signed up for one of those trips they advertise at all of the tourism offices.  For something like $300 MXN ($15 USD), I had a full day experience.  I did not fully grasp what beautiful nature I was going to see.  The tour was advertised as a boat tour through the mangroves to see flamingos and then a stop at the beach.  This previous sentence does no justice at all to the beautiful experience I had there.  Our driver picked us up at our hotels/hostels and so began our journey:

The day started with a boat ride directly to the flamingos.  They are funny and goofy and silly and all of those things we love about animals.  We parked the boat near them and they were all kinda chatty with each other and playing around and annoying each other.  At one point, a leader began to fly away and a flock of flamingos followed.  I did not realize that flamingos can fly.  Their necks stick out at full extension when they fly.  They are very long birds while in flight-mode.

We got pretty close to the mangroves on the boat.  We then entered a natural canal formed by mangroves.  It felt like we were in a video game.  The mangroves enclosed our path.  There were birds everywhere.  It was peaceful and quiet.  I was at ease.  The branches and roots of the mangroves are their own natural works of art.  The pictures do them no justice.

The next part of the trip was a ride to the beach of Celestun.  This was surprising as well.  There were very few tourists there.  The water was beautiful.  This is the Gulf of Mexico side, so it doesn't have that same look as Tulum, but it didn't need it.  I drank beers with my new girl friends from Mexico from the tour.  We talked about life.  They work for the Mexican government in the office of transparency.  They were stressed from work and very happy to meet other people from around the world. 

From this point on, I started doing more day trips that were geared towards Spanish-speaking local Mexican families.  I was spending entire days listening to Spanish and speaking Spanish.  Before this point in my trip, my days were mostly spent speaking English with other hostelers. Celestun seemed like it would be the beginning of another phase of my travel journey; one that was decidedly more Spanish-speaking.