Real de Salinas: a mystery that unfolds quietly
About 6 miles from Celestún, Real de Salinas is an abandoned place. A “ghost town”: a curse weighs on this place that made all the inhabitants die little by little. And the few survivors preferred to abandon it because of the decadence they experienced.
Real de Salinas: What to expect
Real de Salinas sits near the mangroves. Here you can find the vestiges of what was a prosperous coastal community last century. Its boom was the result of the expansion of the activities of salt and dye stick. But today only the ruins of houses and buildings remain.
When you arrive at this ghost town you can see a chapel in ruins and without a roof. Crossing the esplanade you can see the worn houses. And at the entrance a text on the wall, which gives traces of the curse the entire place received.
A chilling story
“Welcome visitors to this town in ruins because of the concessionaires of the neighboring port of Celestún who do not give work to those who live here”.
This is the story: when the salt boom collapsed in the 1970’s, the people of Celestún refused to give work to the inhabitants of Real de Salinas. They had the surname of “Campechanos”, and some shopkeepers even refused to sell them supplies.
One of the theories behind the hatred towards the people of Real was a love story. A young man from there supposedly stole a young lady. She was the daughter of a well-known Celestún businessman, which unleashed the fury of the latter and his social circle.
As a result, Celestún tried to block Real de Salinas in every way. The people, desperate, without food and work, began to emigrate or die, until there were only a few dozen inhabitants left, one of whom sent for a powerful sorcerer from Campeche to put a curse on the Celestún people, whom they blamed for all their misfortunes.
Real de Salinas: what to do
If you have never been to Real de Salinas, we recommend that you be accompanied by a guide if you do not want to get lost at the first opportunity, because to get there there are endless roads, shortcuts, turns, curves, dips and hills, and if that were not enough, there is not a single reference sign.
The first thing you see when you arrive at Real de Salinas is a small chapel in ruins, without a roof, which keeps within its silent walls the secrets of the people who lived there.
Across the huge esplanade are the houses and, at the entrance, a text written on a wall, which seems to make sense of the supposed curse that the locals put on the port of Celestún:
How to get there
To get to Real de Salinas you have to leave the Yucatecan town of Celestún, take a path through the mangroves, supported by an all-terrain vehicle and with a guide at your side, because it is very easy to get lost in the place, even with GPS.
