flamingos!

i rode a 13 hour nightbus from San Cristobal to Merida. i felt surprisingly well rested, and show up to my friend's bonnie's house. the first thing she says is "you look like shit!" gracias.

i enter their fabulously cool (did i mention it's f-ing HOT in Mierda?), 50 foot ceiling casa which has an open kitchen in a patio with a swimming fountain thing. a lion head spits lukewarm water into a shallow pool. classy!

bonnie's roommate and i head to this suburban mall to meet bonnie and another friend after their spanish class. this is a mall with a sears, a walmart, movie theater. it's very much like an american mall but all the stores have hilariously weird names like: Bizarro is the fancy jewelry store, Smoogus is the smoothie joint, LizManelli for old lady clothes, Suburbia is the hip urban outfitters like thing. we go to the food court and i get a really good taco al pastor. with pineapple. bonnie practices her new spanish at the chinese place. very odd.

we hop in the rental car and head to Celestun, which has a huge flamingo population. 4 gringas in a nissan. we stop for gas, which begins our day of inappropriate phrases like "wow, it feels just like home, a mexican guy is cleaning the windshield." or, bonnie's thoughtful description of the interesting landscape dotted with hennequin "that's the plant they use to make shit with." the radio blasts Bon Jovi. we notice a lot of really young kids behind the wheel of cars, but it's just that all mayans look like they're 12 years old, but they're actually 40. 

we arrive in celestun and find a boat guy to take us to see the flamingos. he promises 5 stops and a very long tour, just the four of us. special. we all get in the boat which has cool swivelly seats, like airport chairs attached to a series of boards so we can spin around and face eachother . all jorge can do besides drive the boat is is stare at bonnie's bouncing bosom, in unison with the waves. he's in a trance. 

stop 1: the petrified forest, which jorge tells us is 60 years old. um, ok. we get attacked by mosquitos and sink into some 3 feet deep mud up to our waists and cry out "atreyu!" and decide to move on to stop 2.

here we see our flamingos. wow, they are really ugly! and sortof pink. turns out flamingos are pink in zoos because they feed them a special diet or something. they twist their heads in ways that make us uncomfortable. like, ow. 

next we go to a sinkhole in the middle of some mangroves, which we get to via a very rickety boardwalk. the water is blue green, dotted with colorful fish. verrry beautiful. jorge tells us the water is just a little fresca and we jump in. it's fantastic, refreshing. this is the first time i've felt comfortable, temperature wise in yucatan. jorge is staring at us 4 chicks in bikinis like he's having a vision of the virgin mary or something. i tell him to stop being a wuss and jump in, at least i think that's what i told him in spanish..he dives in and proceeds to pinch each of our asses. like ooh! that was my ass! ooh! mine too! and mine! um, kinda awkward jorge. 

we take some silly pictures and head to the next stop, a creepy mangrove tunnel, then some more flamingos, flamingos and it's now 2 1/2 hours later, the sun is setting, we are flying along the coast at full speed, wind in our knotted hair, content with our tour and jorge says "la marea esta muy baja." it sure is jorge, thumbs up! and he's all, no, really, the tide is super low. you betcha jorge! and that's when i notice we've run aground, about a mile from shore, we're on this huge sandbar with patches of seagrass. ok, it's now a three hour tour... 

"all the fatties out of the boat!" thankfully, the boat floats at this point, but let's just say that we spent the next hour empuje-ing este pinche barca. we are stepping in goo, crushing crabs and feeling dead fish with our toes. jorge holds up a sea cucumber to the norwegian girl "hola guapaaa" and makes it squirt rather pornographically, she blushes. 

we finally free ourselves into the open sea and make it back to the beach in time for a chelada (beer-garita) at sunset. we give jorge a tip despite his creepiness, and enjoy a nighttime swim in the bright hot water. muy excellente my first day in yucatan.