Since on day three we went to the wrong pink lakes, we decided to try again and find the one we had seen in pictures and looked huge.
This time the car ride was of 3 hours, but we decided it would be worth it. To make the ride less exhausting we made a stop at Izamal, a little village painted completely in yellow, to have breakfast. It turns out they have nothing vegetarian in the market we had decided to eat at, they didn´t even have water, only soda.
We wandered around and finally found a nice-looking building with a restaurant. It was cozy and fresh. We ordered our food and watched some ladies making tortillas on a comal (a big circular metallic plate above a fireplace). The food was delicious.
After that, we were ready to look around and found a little archeological center in the middle of the village. We climbed the many steps to the top and were rewarded with a view over the whole village. You could see in very direction, it was awesome.
Before we got back to the car, to make it to the pink lake, we took pictures and filmed a little bit, enjoying the unique place we were in. I must say I was disappointed to not find a yellow beetle to take a picture with.
We hoped back in the car and made ourselves ready for another two hours of drive to the pink lake.
It was completely worth it. When we arrived, we saw huge white saltmountains, they looked like snow. We followed a pink river that lead us straight to the lake, which was about 5 times bigger than the ones on day three. It was the perfect time to arrive, because most of the tourists were already gone and it wasn´t cloudy, like it had been on some part of our ride to the saltlake.
You aren´t allowed to enter without a guide, for safety reasons concerning the cleanness of the water. They have to take care of it and can´t let tourists wade inside because of the sunscreen and dirt they have on their skin. The salt is for selling and to keep the water free of tourists, the company that runs the place lets the fishermen of the village charge the tourists 50 mexican pesos each and show them around, in exchange for them taking care of the place. It gives some locals another option for when the fishing isn´t so great.
Don´t forget to put on sunscreen and have something to cover your shoulders, especially if you are a girl in a dress (like I was). I put so much sunscreen on and still, my shoulders ended up red and hurting. The sun in Mérida is very strong, even more in the summer, so take care of yourself if you take a trip there.
To end the day we stopped at a nearby beach, walked around a little bit and settled in a tiny restaurant. Most funny thing was, that in the menu they had everything in Spanish and English, for tourists to understand. We discovered they had traduced everything with google traductor because where they should have written starters they wrote tickets :D, which is one way to traduce “entradas”, but in this case it was the wrong one, we couldn´t stop laughing.
Si if you go to Mérida and have the chance to go to the pink lake, don´t skip it, the long ride is worth it. Go around 4-5pm. It´s a unique experience, who doesn´t want to see pink water?
