I invited our close friend and fellow cenote hunter, Louise, to write  the following article . Louise also shared her pictures with us.  Thank you so much Louise………….

Road Trip to Tizimin and Rio Lagartos, Yucatan, Mexico.

On February 1st, 2010 myself and my husband Al decided it was a good day for a road trip to Tizimin, Yucatan. This town is about 2 hours and 20 minutes on the toll road from Cancun heading South West.

We arrived at Tizimin and in the center of this town is the church. We understand many people from neighboring towns come here to celebrate “The Day of the Kings” (January 6) , which was very evident as candles and plant offerings are still visible.

Exterior of church

Interior of church

This photo of the inside of the church shows the great size.

In front of the church is the plaza, where many people will meet to sit and enjoy the tranquility. (we have found on our travels that many churches do have a court yard /plaza in front of the church)

To see a town one must walk the streets, which we did and we came across the town market. This market had many stalls of food, clothing, and household items…and of course live chickens. We did stop for a drink in the food area..where people eat and meet their friends.

Live chickens

We spent a couple hours in this wonderful town of Tizimin and then decided as we were close to Rio Lagartos we would continue on to see this town located on the ocean. This drive took about 40 minutes..and as we left Tizimin  we encountered a very small town called Kikil.
Here we saw a large abandoned church. I wished we could of stopped and explored further this structure…but we were on our way.

We arrived in Rio Lagartos and were greeted by a guide who said he would take us on a boat trip through the water ways towards the ocean. (the cost was 250.00 pesos each for a 2 hour ride). We decided as we were here we should see the area. This area is protected and the water ways were clean and evidence of wild life is in abundance.

This is the dock which we left from and you see some of the town in the background.

As we left he pointed to a large flock of White Pelicans (picture 1716), he advised us these pelicans have migrated from Canada. What a long trip!

A very large termite nest

A black eagle (he is so beautiful)

The guide located this crocodile. and he was very close to our launch and a very good size

White herons can been seen everywhere

Pelican…keeping a sharp eye open

Flamingos .you can see the water is shallow. We were told by the guide that flamingos are born white, as they eat shrimp they change their coloring to the pink. Also the flamingos come to this area to lay their eggs, which is only once a year. In the months May and June the area has thousands of eggs and at night the raccoons have their feeding of eggs.

Al and our guide (Henry) are standing in the lagoon where the salt is dredged. The lagoon has a raised level and this is where the flamingos lay their eggs. The lagoon is a good feeding area for the lagoons.

The large mounds of salt which has been taken from the lagoon. We were told the salt here supports all of Mexico. There is a small town located here called Los Colorades which supplies the labor for the extraction of the salt .

Our guide had another stop for us…at this location he said one could float like a cork as there was so much salt in the water.  Al said he must experience this feeling, so we stopped.

As we were going back to the launch, the guide stopped and dug into the beach for the white mud. We plastered our faces as he said this mud is so good for your skin. (we did see people with a full body suit of mud)

We continued on our trip back with mud on our faces. To wash this mud from your body he took us to a beautiful cenote. I must admit my face has never felt so soft.

We found this location to be just beautiful. If you love wildlife in their natural habitat you will not want to miss this opportunity.

Time to head home to Cancun… until the next road trip…