Ría Lagartos

Ria Lagartos, the colorful village where mangroves, the sea and salt make the best contrast that your eyes can admire.

It’s a flow of seawater that goes between the mainland and a narrow strip of beach. Ria Lagartos was declared Biosphere Reserve in 1979 for hosting an impressive diversity of birds and reptiles, fish and mammals. Here is the main nesting area in the country of the beautiful pink flamingo.

After a long journey by road from Merida to Ria Lagartos, I could see how we were approaching to our destination and I was very excited, I noticed that the flora began to change, it was becoming greener and the sea breeze began to cover my face. Once you are entering you can recognize the captivating joy of the people; without hesitation, I went straight to the pier.

In the fringe of the pier you can see how one side is full of seafood restaurants, villas, among other shops and in the opposite side are the eager boaters waiting to take you to see the beauty offered by the site. I arrived at lunchtime so I went directly to the restaurant that first caught my attention, “Perico Marinero”. It was hard to make a decision on the menu, everything looked delicious but I ended up deciding for a ceviche with a cold michelada (Alcocholic drink that is prepared with magggy sauce, lemon, Tabasco sauce, Worcestershire mixed with beer)

As soon as we finished eating, we immediately walked to the other side of the street and began the adventure on the boat, Don Enoch was our tour guide. I must say that my expectations were to see many lizards and flamingos; for my surprise I only saw one lizard that as soon as its felt we were watching he faded into the water; what left me amazed was the amount of mangrovesgreen as shining and the water with the color of the sky. It didn’t take a long to begin to see from afar pink figures and I said – There are the flamingos! We couldn’t get too close to not scare them off and leave, but the view was perfect. Don Enoch told us that if we believed that they were a lot, we would be surprised to know that there even more, but as it was nesting season, most of the flamingos were raising their babies near of the area.

We said goodbye to flamingos and we routed to Las Coloradas. I had just noticed that we arrived because of the mountains of salt that were seen in the distance; We got off the boat and up a small hill of sand and when I was up I couldn’t believe it, everything was really pink, so beautiful that I couldn’t resist and I went in. The instant my body plunged at the sea, it felt like I was flying, it was amazing I became as light as a feather.

This is due to the excessive amount of salt, there was so much that I was curious and tried a drop of this water and it was like having gotten a fist full of salt into my mouth. We were a few minutes and we went out of the water, Don Enoch had a pot of clay mud, which he claimed would leave our skin soft and that served as an exfoliant; I had nothing to lose so we all bathe the whole body with clay, we looked very funny, then we went to the last stop.

They took us back near from the pier where was a freshwater area and we could remove the clay from our bodies and as Don Enoch said, my skin felt super soft, I really enjoyed that bath on the beach. So we finished our tour that was wonderful, every minute was well worth it and I will never forget the colors, smells and sensations that I discovered that day.