I’m not old enough to be classified as a Canadian Snowbird, a member of that group of senior citizens who flock in large numbers south each year in order to escape the harsh Canadian winter, but I am considering signing up for an early membership package. There’s much to be said about chasing the never-ending summer: I haven’t worn a shirt on a regular basis for almost two weeks now, shoes have been permanently replaced by sandals, and my tan lines are becoming very, very significant. I love summer, and with that said, I hope I don’t have to experience cold weather and snow for quite some time. Mind you, I think I could endure snow if I was somewhere way up high on some remote mountain snowfield. But for now its tropical weather and warm flowing waters.
Currently I’m in a little Internet café in Papantla in the state of Veracruz. We’ve been continuing on the Mexican portion of our WILD road trip these past few days, heading further south, slowly, to the tiny whitewater Mecca of Mexico, the village of Jalcomulco.
Our first paddling destination after crossing the border was the Rio Valles, and a section of waterfalls called the Cascadas de Micos. Some say you have to search a lifetime in order to find paradise. The problem with those wanderers is that they never came here to Micos. Micos is a paradise on Earth, a tropical garden of Eden where the Rio Valles flows. And it’s a paddlers’ paradise as well: warm, crystal-clear water with several challenging waterfalls to test your paddling skills.
I managed to bring my paddling to new heights (pun intended) by running a 25-foot vertical waterfall. I have a natural fear of heights but for some reason I feel more secure if there’s a kayak and water involved. You still get that freefall feeling but its not quite as scary as say cliff jumping. Luckily at Micos there are 7 different drops for practice before you man-up for the big one.
Then there’s the really big one, a 22-meter waterfall. For most mortal paddlers this one is off-limits. We were at Micos for a couple of days before Slater, one of our instructors, decided he wanted to test his paddling skills, his nerve, and fate, by running this large waterfall. Slater gathered the nerve to run this drop one afternoon in front of the entire WILD group. He ran it, but unfortunately on the descent his boat flattened out and he landed flat on the water at the base of the waterfall. For smaller drops, landing flat is sometimes the plan, but for waterfalls of this size landing flat means risking serious injury. Slater was very lucky. He was ejected from his boat upon impact and swam away from the incident with nothing more than a compressed disk and a bruised ego.
After the incident we continued downstream. Since everyone was already accustomed to this section, there was a bit of a free-for-all; people were running lines confidently without instructors around, the group really spread out throughout the section, and the atmosphere was very relaxed. I was at the head of the pack paddling downstream not really paying attention to my surroundings or other paddlers, and, when I finally looked up, I was all alone in the middle of this jungle river.
The section of Micos below the waterfalls is a highly-channelized waterway where the water literally flows through the trees. There are numerous islands and side channels. The take-out, our campsite, is on the right side of the river, down a very small and narrow channel that is easy to miss if you don’t know what to look for. By the time I snapped out of my paddling rhythm and finally looked up at my surroundings I was past the take-out and floating into unfamiliar waters.
The jungle quickly encroached on the river and its density intensified with each passing moment. There was no place to get out where you would not have had to trek through dense, snake-and-spider infested jungle. It was the first time in a long while I was scared.
After several kilometers and many small rapids the jungle receded from the water’s edge and the landscape transformed from dense overhanging jungle to open fields of sugarcane. I found myself on a sugarcane plantation. Sugarcane, one of the most important crops in Mexico, is planted in a fashion that when its mature its ten times more dense than any jungle. Luckily, however, this plantation had a makeshift road network throughout the fields which allowed for the free movement of donkeys, people, small trucks, and lost kayakers. I hiked for a while until I came upon a local couple having a picnic lunch. In the best Spanglish I could muster, I asked where I was, how to get to the main road, and which way it was to the campsite. Later I found out that when I asked them where I was, it came out as, “Where is where?” Fortunately, the two picnickers could put two and two together and figured out that I was a kayaker who needed a ride back to where the other thirty kayakers were living. And off we went in one of the oldest Ford trucks I’d ever seen. Seven kilometers later I was back in camp.
This was only the first river stop on our six-week Mexican tour. If the adventures, mishaps, and lucky saves continue at this pace I’ll need to cut into valuable paddling time in order to disseminate further stories. We just finished our first river in Mexico and are heading to the next. Today was a break from paddling and a bit of a cultural-immersion day with a tour of the famous Totenac ruins at El Tajin. Tonight is camping on the beach; tomorrow is more paddling.
