Rio Largartos

On the third day of our road trip we headed out to Rio Largartos.  Here is the clue for the kids:

"Rest your weary eyes as you cross through the jungle.  Your resolve will be tested soon enough as you pass by crocodiles.  Don’t worry the jaguars will not hunt you unless you wear pink!  The water is not quite blood-red but it is close, you must take a dip (especially if you are Darin!).  We will clean you up in a white, frothy bath of mud.  It feels as soft as suds."

What we thought would be a 2 1/2 hour drive from Merida ended up being over 4 hours.  Plus, we got a super late start and I was super grumpy with my family because of it.  Ken and the kids talked me into continuing on and cheered me up quite a bit.  But, if there was a day of our road trip that I could do over it would be this one.  Mainly because of my bad attitude.  It's a good thing we took tons of pictures because looking back I am appreciating all of the fun we had!  Even though there was a lot of disappointing things that happened, we really had a great time.

So aside from being late the first thing we noticed was that there was a fire in the preserve.  It had been burning for two days and they were still waiting for helicopters to fly out and put it out.  Rio Largartos is a biosphere reserve and bird estuary.  I really hope they put the fire out by now because it is such a beautiful area.

I think we ended up with the youngest guide.  It happened to be the owners son and I don't think he has done many tours.  Darin loved it though because he drove the boat extremely fast!  Partially to get us through the smokey area and partially fueled by the enthusiasm of 3 teenage boys.

The lagoon is inhabited by 98 known crocodiles.  He took us towards the shore and slapped the water with his hand for about a minute and this guy came sneaking out.

Right to the edge of our boat.  We didn't know if our guide was going to pet him or what???

It was really cool! And totally scary that they came out to get ya so fast.

The kids completely loved it!

We saw lots of different birds on our boat ride through the lagoon.  I totally forgot what they were called, but this was a male and female.  Oh, and our guide only spoke in Spanish so Ken had to translate everything.  Which I probably wouldn't have cared about except that on their website they said it would be an English speaking guide.  Still it was only 900 pesos for our family of 6 to have a private tour.  About $75 USD.

This is a blackhawk.  Ginger and Rose were so excited because that is the name of a subdivision near their elementary school that several of our friends live in.

This is the biggest crane that we saw, or have ever seen!  This place would be heaven for serious birders.  They have nearly 400 different varieties of birds.

The reason why I became interested in going to Rio Largartos was because it is known for it's Flamingos. 

 Over 40,000 of them are said to nest here in the summer months.

We didn't see a "sea of flamingos" as some reviewers had said but we saw a few batches of 20 or more a few places around the lagoon.

In the far distance we did see what looked like maybe hundreds but our guide said that he was not allowed to take us there because that is where the eggs are.  Flamingos only lay one egg a year.

Flamingos stay together in their family groups so that was kind of cool to learn.  Also, we learned that when they are babies they kind of look like ducks, but over time with the salt they consume they get longer necks and legs.  Their legs and necks are so brittle that a wave can break them.

It was pretty awesome seeing them take flight!

Our guide took us to an area with lots of little pink lakes.  It doesn't show up in the pictures as well because the sun was setting.  In person they were definitely rose colored.  This is where the Yucatan salt company extracts salt from the lagoon water as the water evaporates.  They ship about 500,000 tons of salt each year from these ponds.  The first pond is about 80 times the salt content of the ocean.  The pond behind it is 1000 times the salt content of the ocean.

We floated in it for about 10 minutes.  Since we all had a ton of mosquito bites it stung like heck.  The reason these ponds are pink is because of the beta-carotene found in the algae.  The beta-carotene is also what turns the flamingos pink, not the shrimp they feed one.  Although it happens because they feed on the briny shrimp found in the algae.

Surprisingly Darin had no problem whatsoever floating in the salt pond.

Nathan and Rose liked it, Ginger was just meh.

I didn't like it at all.  It's just too weird.

Then we went to an area with white clay.  See the frothy suds for Darin.

Squishy, squishy!

If you dig about 8 inches down into the mud you get past the algae to pure white clay.

These two got very into taking a "Mayan Mud Bath".

I'm surprised Darin put this much on him.  

Nathan wanted it from head to toe!

More face painting!

Ginger was okay, she liked rubbing it on my legs and arms more then on hers.

It's a ghost!

Check out Darin's expressions in the next three pictures.

"Can we please go take a shower?"  The girls were pretty happy though.

After awhile Ginger really started to get into it.

Nathan dug up even more clay to play with.

Ginger let me draw a mustache (or as she currently loves to say mustach-Eeee-Oooo) on her after I drew one on her Daddy.

Sexy!

These two are so cute together!  With or without their mustaches.

They remind me of some aliens from a movie but I can't remember which one.

And then they turned into zombies.

Rose helped me put some clay on my face.

I was able to convince Darin to let me draw a goatee on his face, then a mustache, then circles on his cheeks, and finally he gave in and let me paint his whole head.  One day he may be able to stand up to his mom, but not today!  Although he did extort 80 pesos from me.

Sadly the only picture of us together, our guide was still driving the boat at warp speed.

And Darin let me put the clay on his hair!

Nathan loved doing the mud most out of all of us.  He dove right in and caked himself from head to toe.

Cracking up.

Night of the Living Dead.

These two stayed in the back of the boat watching Darin haggle the price up:)  Ken still can't believe I got him to do it, or that he enjoyed it so much!

On the way back in we saw a jungle fire.  It was a long ways away from the other fire but our guide said that it travels through the roots of the trees first.  We were so glad that he stopped to put it out.

On the way out of the lagoon we saw a crocodile again.  This time because Rose was splashing in the water on the side of the boat.  I bet they knew that little girl would taste good.  So thankful he didn't lunge onto the boat.

The kids really, really loved seeing the crocodillo!

Creepy!

Pictures of the town of Rio Largartos.

The awful black smoke.

We rinsed off in the channel going out to the ocean.  Since the road was closed because of the fire there were tons of boats going out to the oceanside.  Our guide didn't feel safe taking us to the ocean since his boat was so much smaller.  It would have been cool to see what the Gulf of Mexico looks like at the southern end since Texas is at the northern end.  But we had a 3+ hour tour and were tired and had a long ride in front of us.

On the way home we picked up tacos and tortas from a roadside stand near our church. They were delicious!  We saw a lot more churches in the state of Yucatan then we did in Quintana Roo.  We saw 3 church buildings while driving through small towns.