Another chance meeting!

Following the incredibly serendipitous meeting that we had in Nova Scotia, we had another one here in the Yucatan, although not at the same level of incredulity! During the 10 days we spent at our lovely Airbnb set on a former working ranch, a couple from France with their little daughter stayed for a night at a second cottage on the property and we spent quite a bit of time chatting about our respective travels / plans and generally hitting it off. They were a little rueful that they were spending only one night at the ranch having seen how beautiful it is, and mentioned that they would be proceeding to stay a couple of nights at the seaside town of Celestun, known to attract huge flocks of flamingos.

We had planned on visiting Rio Lagartos, another seaside town further east of Celestun, for the flamingos but when we called up the nature guide there a couple of days ahead, he told us that Celestun had much larger flocks at that time of the year. We did not have time left to do an overnight trip to Celestun and instead decided to do an impromptu day trip the following day, starting very early to do the 2 hour car journey to make it in time for the first boat ride that goes out at 8am.

Since the boat has a capacity of 10 or so, we planned to share it with other visitors, as we understood is commonly done in Celestun. It is always more fun when there are more like-minded nature loving souls on a safari (the more the eyes, the more the sightings, and it also helps to kill the vacant stretches of time when there is little bird / animal activity).

However, when we showed up at the boat launch, there was only us and the boatmen, perhaps because it was Jan 1 and people may have partied well into the night! We decided to wait 15 minutes to see if anyone else showed up, but the clock ticked to the deadline and we decided to go off on our own. Just then, a local taxi pulls up with a largish tourist group made up of several adults and a few children. And who was in the group - the same family from France along with a family from Germany they had met up at their hotel in Celestun!

Both parties were quite pleasantly surprised at this reunification, and they quickly decided to join us on the boat we had arranged. The couple of hours we spent on the boat was great fun - not just for the great sightings of flamingos and several other birds but also for the familiar company!

We weren’t expecting to be in Celestun at all, and certainly not on that day. And of all the hundreds of tourists in Celestun that morning, this one family we knew decided to show up at just the right time for us to share the boat!

(Below is the family in question, standing next to Namita, and further below are the flamingos in question!)