Spotted! Pink Flamingos in Mayaguana!

So, I kinda sorta LOVE Mayaguana. Sure, we had a great time last year when we scouted tons of baby conch shells and coral over on the west side, but this time we love Mayaguana for a few new reasons…

#1. We saved 300 bones at the customs and immigration office at check-in since they allowed us to enter the country using our cruising permit from last year. Apparently, we arrived in the Bahamas in April 2014 on our first go round so our one-year permit was still valid (seeing as it was March twenty-something when we arrived this time)! Score one for the good guys! And the customs officials were so insanely nice about it all.

#2. This super remote little island (one of the farthest in the Bahamas) actually has a functioning Batelco office (right next door to Customs no less) with real live people working there and normal 8 to 4:30 working hours. I couldn’t even believe it! Twenty minutes after arriving in Mayaguana and we were rocking and rolling with some fast Bahamas wifi service on our iPad! I thought getting us back up and running internet-wise would’ve been a much bigger pain in the you know what.

#3. PINK FLAMINGOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Need I say more?

We FINALLY spotted the elusive pink flamingo. Right here in Mayaguana!

I know. Insane. We’ve been looking for these pretty pink flamingos at every island along the way on our route south, and nothing. Not a single pink bird. We were beginning to think that all the Bahamas guide books were lying to us. Flamings in the wild? No way!

WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here they are. Right smack dab in our faces in Mayaguana, Bahamas. Seriously amazing. So amazing I took over 500 photos in less than 30 minutes. But that’s another story. Lol.

We spotted these flamingo friends while dinghying Oliver to shore the other morning. (Again, more bonus points for the tedious task of taking your boat dog to land.) The flamingos were quite aways away from the dinghy dock in the shallow end of the Abrahams Bay anchorage on the south side of the island, but still just right here, basically in the open ocean.

Jereme noticed them first and we thought for sure we were seeing things. From afar, they looked like a bunch of buoys. Pinkish buoys…so that was kinda weird. ;))

Jer went in for a closer peak while I waited for Oliver to do his business on shore. When Jer returned, he confirmed his sighting. Flamingos indeed! At that point, we made a beeline back to the boat to grab my camera and drop off Oliver (we definitely didn’t need a barking poodle in tow who would for sure scare away these beautiful birds).

We dinghied back to the end of the anchorage and snuck up nat geo style on these gorgeous creatures. Who would’ve thought they’d just be sitting standing pretty in the ocean?

We got as close as we could before turning off the dinghy engine and floating downstream towards the flock, careful not to make any crazy movements or loud noises. They were totally cool with us hanging by at a comfortable 50 to 75-foot distance. Anything closer and the entire group immediately took off flying to a safer 200-foot distance. But still stuck around nonetheless.

After soaking up the experience for a little while longer, we finally called it quits and dinghied back to the boat totally awestruck and in disbelief that we finally saw a flamingo!

And then went back again. The next day. Lol.

Yup, the very next day we went in for another flamingo viewing party. We are ridiculous.

We (mostly me) just couldn’t get enough of these crazy birds and turns out the flock we saw on day one doubled by day two. This time, the flamingo fiesta was in full blown party mode with 30+ birds hanging around. Unfortunately, with a cold front rolling through the area, the photos are a little less beautiful, but still it’s freaking FLAMINGOS! In the wild.

Oh and I figured I might as well throw in a couple consolation “non-flamingo” photos I took while in Mayaguana…

^^anchor down in Abraham’s Bay.^^

^^the view from our boat looking out towards the atlantic. the water is just insane.^^

^^there are our friends on s/v Altera who made the trek from Puerto Rico the day after us.^^

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