We signed up for a small group tour to Celestún mostly because the timing worked and the weather looked decent. Also, I was promised flamingos. Live ones. Squawking and flapping through a mangrove swamp on the Gulf Coast. The only flamingos I’ve ever seen lived quietly in a neighbor’s front yard and kept very, very still.
It all seemed worth the 90-minute drive from Mérida. Turns out it was way more than worth it.
Our guide, Sergio, was fantastic—laid back and easy to talk to. So were the only other two people in the van with us, a pair of young Brits. Ria and Imogen were chatty and somehow made “then we were asked for our passports by policemen with guns” sound like a dry comedy. According to Ria, Mexican authorities can stop any public transport and demand to see your papers. You’re supposed to keep your passports on you, not, as I always assumed, securely locked in the hotel safe. We laughed. What a funny story (that Ria came out of safely, by the way). Which we discovered to be incredibly useful just a week later when we left on a train trip to Chiapas. So, thanks, Ria!
But anyway, back to the flamingos. Celestún sits inside a biosphere reserve packed with mangroves, crocodiles, and what has to be the entire North American bird registry. The flamingos gather here during the cooler months, eating all the shrimp they can find in preparation for flying off to Rio Lagartos to nest and lay their eggs on the salt flats and sandy beaches there in April and May.
Flamingos pair up monogamously for the season (faithful, but not forever). Each couple lays a single egg and takes turns incubating it for the month it takes to hatch. Both parents feed the chick with bright red “crop milk” (don’t ask) until it can toddle off to join a massive group of its cousins in a giant nursery watched over by whichever adult flamingos drew the short straw that morning while the rest head off to eat, presumably relieved.
The window for spotting these pink wonders is weirdly specific. Not only do you have to be there between December and March, you must also hit the right time of day. The tide has to be just high enough for the shrimp to swim but low enough for the flamingos to wade around looking for tasty snacks. Luckily, that kind of calculation was Sergio's job, not mine. I’m bad at math.
And he did it admirably. We saw hundreds of flamingos—mostly huddled in clusters, a few gliding overhead with all the grace of birds who were never told they shouldn’t be able to fly. They don’t float or swim, so they need shallow water to feed—hence the oddly specific tide requirements.
We kept a respectful distance in the boat, but even from afar, it felt unreal. A giant pink smear across the water, wobbling around on stick legs, just doing their thing while we floated by, trying not to spook them. But they weren’t bothered. They’d clearly done this before.
We could have sat there much longer gazing at those crazy birds, but I guess the boat guy had places to be. So off we zipped—past Isla de los Pájaros, a compact little island teeming with birds. Pelicans, spoonbills, cormorants, herons, ibises—every branch of every tree had one. And I think every single one was mid-argument or mid-preen. It was loud, chaotic, and weirdly majestic, like a bird convention that had gotten out of hand.
Past all the noisy chattering, we sped toward a wall of tangled green, where we slowed down and pulled into a mangrove tunnel. It was quiet and dim, the water like glass, with just enough sun filtering through to make the whole thing feel slightly unreal. Nobody else was around. It was oddly peaceful for a place known to contain crocodiles—not to mention jaguars, ocelots, and the occasional monkey. The mangroves here are the real deal: all four types found in Mexico—red, black, white, and buttonwood—all tangled together in one big, watery thicket. They anchor the coastline, filter the water, and double as nurseries for fish and shrimp.
But we didn’t see any of that. Or any crocodiles, for that matter. Just tangled roots, drifting shade, and the soft lap of water against the hull. Which was a bit disappointing because I'd been wondering—flamingos are pink because their diet consists primarily of shrimp, so are the area’s crocodiles pink because their diet consists primarily of flamingos? Inquiring minds, I’m just saying.
The mangrove tunnel was pretty cool in itself, but it’s also the only way to get to Baldiosera—a freshwater spring tucked deep inside the Celestún estuary. Hidden like a secret in the middle of the swamp, it feels like something out of a very mellow nature documentary: glass-clear water surrounded by gnarled tree roots, tiny fish darting past your ankles, and a quiet so complete it makes you suspicious.
It's technically safe to swim there—there's a little dock and signs encouraging you to take a dip—but just as we arrived, we spotted our first (and only) crocodile of the day. It was small, half-buried in the brush, and so still, it might've been a prop from a low-budget, spaghetti-Western Jurassic Park. If it noticed us, it didn’t care. Maybe it was asleep. Maybe it was wrestling with existential ennui. Whatever. As long as it stayed where it was, I was fine. Though gravely disappointed to learn that the answer to my earlier question about pink crocodiles was, “Um, no.”
So we did not swim. But we did linger, happily. The spring felt like a reward for taking the time to get there, a perfect contrast to the flamingos’ chaos and the Bird Island bickering. No feathers. No squawking. Just calm water, thick mangroves, and filtered light that made the whole place feel like it didn’t really care if you were there or not.
Thus ended our flamingo tour. We then headed north to Sisal for lunch and some beach time. Sisal used to be a major port during the henequén boom at the end of the 1800s and still has a few colonial bones to prove it, but these days, it's more about sand, shells, and not being in a hurry. We ate at Casa Porfirias, which had a pool, a breezy restaurant, and seafood that didn't need adjectives. It was just plain delicious.
Oh, and the beach…dang. No crowds. Just warm, calm water so clear you could spot your toes from space, and a shoreline absolutely littered with seashells—perfect ones, too, the kind that make you want to pick up every single one even though you have no plan for them. Sisal's not a resort town—it's more of a local beach, where families set up lawn chairs under palm trees, and no one's selling you a jet ski ride. Almost suspiciously perfect—like the kind of place you find once and then never tell anyone about again, just in case too many people show up. Hmm…now that I think about it, forget I said anything.
We didn't stay long, but long enough. Celestún gave us birds and quiet and a very real reminder that flamingos—the real ones—are beautiful. Sisal gave us lunch, a nap-in-the-sun vibe, and a few more reasons to keep exploring the Yucatán slowly. Preferably in a boat, with flamingos—and not-pink crocodiles—at a safe distance.
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