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Rio La Venta: Introduction

This was probably the all-time trip of a lifetime. How can you top perfection. I honestly don’t know if anything could be cooler. I just thank God that he allowed Nate and I to experience something so beautiful, so unbelievably unique, so wild, so adventurous.

The began at a waterfall deep in the jungle and ended in a lake 60 miles downstream. The map below gives you an idea of the route.

Armed with a paddle, an inflatable kayak, a weeks worth of freeze dried meals and a GPS…. we were off.

Thankfully, Nate wrote down a journal to capture the feelings and thoughts we experienced on the river. Below is the exact journal along with several appropriate photographs to fill in the picture.

Also, don’t forget to watch the video of the experience:

Saturday June 5th 2004

Jason and I met in Mexico City last night. We had not seen each other in a full year. We spent most of the night talking in a park outside of the Mexico City airport. When we came back to the airport … I’m so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open. All around us the jungle is alive with noise…

Jason got a tick!

Sunday June 6th 2004

6:00am

I fell asleep with pen in hand I was so tired from not sleeping wink last night. As I read the last entry I can see it doesn’t make much sense. Part of the first night we spent in a park outside of the Mexico City airport and then the rest of the night we came back inside the airport and studied the maps of the La Venta river and the surrounding Chiapas region. By 1:30 am we tried to get some rest until our flight at 6:30am. We just laid out on the marble floor in some corner. In fact we were right outside the airport Hilton hotel that was full, so we just crashed on the doorstep.

Every so often travelers came by to get a hotel room, but it was full and they were turned away at the door, and either slept on the floor somewhere or went someplace else. At 6:30 we took our smaller plane ride to Tuxtla Gutierrez. There was hardly anyone on it, and as we looked out the windows we could see overcast country that was hilly and covered with trees – it definitely looked rural.

As soon as we got off the plane, our bags were waiting in the smallest airport ever. The funny thing was, we were the only ones left and the guard made us verify our luggage tickets.

We jumped into a cab for 250 pesos and the driver brought us to the El Aguacero waterfall on the river.

He kept telling us it was very quiet and dangerous to stay there, because he thought we were going to camp at that one spot for ten days. But it seems like everyone always says everything’s dangerous outside of his or her own hometown, both here and in America. After a 3km dirt road off the main road we got to the Canyon rim where the trail led down to the canyon floor.

Our bags were so heavy we had to make numerous stops, but the stairs were the only thing that made the decent possible.

Seriously, since we’ve been on the river 2 days now, there hasn’t been a single way to get out of the canyon. The walls are so steep and sheer (often over 1200 ft high) and the jungle so thick, that it is in fact impenetrable.
We went up the river shortly to a large waterfall, and returned to pack up our boat.

The float so far has been terrific. The river is between 8” and 3ft deep the whole way and I have not needed to get out and walk at all. Jason has needed to push a few times simply because his canoe sinks a little deeper. We keep reflecting on the fact that a kayak is by far the superior choice for this river, rather than rafts. We’ve seen many buzzards, and lately some black ducks and white herons.

Last night we pulled over on a sand bar for our first campsite at N.16¨48.46 and W. 93¨32.03 elev. 1500.

We climbed up the side of the canyon looking for caves, and noticed that caves are actually everywhere. We found an underground river bed that was dry and followed it through some stalagmites and stalactites and saw dozens and dozens of bats, some small and some large.

In the cave were some pieces of pottery. Many were large collar rimmed jars, as I’ve learned from various archaeology classes in Israel.

We kept following the cave until it went straight down to a pool of water and we stopped because the mud was so thick and heavy. The mud was so caked on our shoes that we couldn’t even walk. It made everything so slick that Jason said they ought to start using it for bearing grease.

The trip down the side of the canyon was heinous, and we sure were tired and ready for bed. Before we crawled into our beds, though, we spent about an hour just sitting in the warm river water.

It felt nice. The night sounds of the jungle are awesome, and the temperature has been perfect, and simply never changes. All night I slept without covering and was fine.

Monday June 7th 2004

6:00am
N 16’52.62 W 93’35.29 – Elevation 1337 meters
All night Jason has been throwing up. All I heard was major hurls echoing up and down the canyon walls. I think he scared all the wildlife away unfortunately. I wish he would just die so I could get some sleep (no, actually I felt sorry for him, but I was tired and since there was nothing I could do for him I decided to just sleep soundly). Hopefully it’s just some bad food, or something, and not the water or some disease. Anyway, he looks fine, but now he just has something that’s not quite sitting well.

Yesterday was an amazing day. I mean it truly was. Here we’ve been floating for two solid days, and the ENTIRE THING has been so interesting. There has not been a single dull spot. The river itself is perfect size for beginners like us. It is not too big that we would pop our rafts, or that we would be scared to go down the rapids. It has the perfect amount of small rapids. (addition: yeah right, read the entries a few days later!)

It started off fairly shallow, which was fine because we were still getting use to our rafts, and learning how to maneuver them. However with all the streams feeding it along the way it has slowly grown and now has some fairly decent rapids at just about every bend. The best part is when the canyon narrows and there are large boulders in the river and the river makes rapids that zigzag through the boulders. Yesterday, in the afternoon I wrapped my kayak around a rock (i.e. Wrapped it square around the rock) while Jason was filming it. We’ll have to see how it turns out.
After breakfast yesterday morning we packed up our camp on the sandbar and our feet were just raw from walking around in the sand all the time (quite the white pilgrims, that’s for sure). The whole river bottom is sand, which is wonderful, except that it is somewhat coarse, and these little city feet are just begging for a little mercy.

Our first major stop was at lunch. We came to some huge waterfalls pouring out of the side of the mountain into some beautiful aqua-azul pools.

The temperature of the water was cooler, which actually was refreshing compared to the warmth of the La Venta River. Each little pool had its own little unique beauty; the foliage surrounding it was thick and lush.

We pulled out the stove and cooked up some food and we were on our way again. Big bummer I lost my hat at the pools. Now I got 5 days of blistering sun without a hat.

Our next stop was a bend in the river with some caves. The cliff was fairly steep, but I scampered up and explored them. It was neat, I saw a whole cluster of bats hanging together. I wonder if they do that as families, or if anyone can join the cluster? I’d say probably the later. Well the caves had all sorts of sticks and even a fence post and some barbed wire that floated down the river, so it must rise quite a bit. On the way down, I showed Jason some climbing practices and he worked on trusting his feet a little more.

The canyon seems to not be as tall lately, even though it still reaches about 400’ or so. As far as wildlife is concerned, we’ve seen many beautiful birds, such as white cranes (with long slender necks); tons of green parakeets; black ducks; and various other specimens I can’t name. We saw a long black snake, but the best so far has been the iguanas, which lie along the banks, perched on rocks or the edge of the cliffs. These iguanas aren’t very big (2.5ft. with tail) but they are fun to watch and observe – since they move like little tanks.
I was blown away, because we came around one bend and saw a group of horses in the water. There were terribly skinny, and I just can’t imagine how they get in and out of this canyon. But a ways further we came across a few cows in the river also, and it seems that there is some type of peasant up on the rim somewhere who has a narrow little trail for these animals to come down and water. But, we never saw anyone.
Amazingly there has been no problems with mosquitoes, and as I write right now, the canyon is just echoing up and down with dozens of bird sounds from parakeets – to who knows what. It really comes alive, especially at night. So far the days seem to start off clear, then get overcast around noon, and then a bit windy in the afternoon, and then clear up at night. Who knows, this could change. Yesterday it clouded up and then we got hit with a rainstorm. The water from the rain was cool, and we jumped into the river to warm up – it felt like a blazing hot bathtub. It’s amazing that the water is such a perfect temperature – I’ve rarely gone swimming in one like that. When we were at the waterfalls (which was an in-feed of the river, and was thus cooler water) the river felt way too hot, and almost sick. However, when it rained, the river then felt so warm and soothing.
Unfortunately I tipped my kayak over today and everything fell out, and in the process I gouged my toe.

It’s amazing how such a small part of your body can affect your overall behavior. So now I’m being extra careful with that foot and wearing my sandals the whole time which is what I should have been doing the whole time. It rained most of the night, but we found shelter under a large ledge on a river sandbar, and so we just listened to the rain come down as our stuff dried out on clotheslines.

After dark, fireflies lighted up the night sky. Thank you God for such a beautiful world, so diverse in so many places. I just love the different places, the deserts, the mountains, the jungles, and the caves…

Tuesday June 8th 2004

6:00pm

Somewhere around N 16’54.60 W 93’38.70
Well, yesterday was quite the eventful day. I can hardly move right now. Every part of my body aches – I am so sore. My fingers can barely grip this pen. The river is a bit larger now and we hit numerous rapids throughout the day. Most of them were passable, but some were not. On the latter ones we would skim our kayaks over the rocks by hand, and then lower them slowly on the narrow spots. Most of the day Jason was very weak because he vomited the night before and he couldn’t eat anything all day. Yesterday it rained most of the day and by mid-afternoon we pulled into a wide sandbar on the side of the river and cooked up some pasta under a large overhang. It was Jason’s first food in a long time.

We were able to get a GPS location from that last point, and figured that we needed to make some more headway, and so we took off all refreshed and ready. Barely had we made it around a couple of bends that we got both pounded hard in a large, rapid, channel. After scouting it out, we concluded that there was nothing we could do but attempt it – and that decision took its toll. What happened then was very similar for both of us. The current slammed our Kayaks sideways up against a big rock, and within seconds the kayaks filled with water and flipped over. We both lost everything. Every piece of luggage, both paddles, everything went floating down stream. After about 45 minutes we were able to round up most of the stuff, but Jason took off downstream to find his paddle. I stayed in the rapids for a while, but finally concluded that my own paddle was nowhere to be found, and might possibly also be downstream. So, then I took off downstream, swamped in my little boat and with no way to paddle but my bare hands on the outside. Going down the next few rapids I felt like a little cork bouncing down a river, totally uncontrollable. Luckily my kayak just sort of followed the main channel.
Well we decided to spend the night right away, and of course everything was soaked. It was dark, we both had a number of cuts and scrapes, and sand was stuck to everything. But hey, even with all that there’s still so much gleam in these eyes (look at my eyes) – we’re having a serious blast. So what if we lose everything and have to walk out??? We spent a good portion of the evening, cutting down branches, weaving, and whittling a paddle together. We’ll see if it works.

Right across from camp we saw a creature that at first looked like a monkey, but later looked like a marsupial or mongoose or something I’ve only seen in zoos.
Well, as I lie in bed this morning, it’s my turn to be as weak as a butterfly because I vomited myself all last night. I’m very tired and weak right now from throwing up, and every inch of my body aches from head to toe. Whew, yesterday was quite a day, hopefully today’s is better. Luckily it is not cold because we sleep right on our mattress pads on the tent floor without coverings. Jason’s blanket is soaked, and all I need is just a sheet to keep all the sand off my pad, and I stay the perfect temperature all night. We tried to get up early so we could take off, but I’m falling back asleep and Jason went to go look for my paddle upstream and maybe he’ll get lucky and find it. Well, it’s Tuesday morning and I’m falling back to sleep to try and catch up a little sleep. My gut sort of feels a little wrenched out.

Wednesday June 9th 2004

6:00am
The CAVE

Everyday is the best day so far out here. Although I woke up with a churning stomach yesterday, a lost paddle, and many cuts and bruises, those all seemed to vanish when the sun came out. It wasn’t long after we started yesterday that the canyon got narrower and narrower. On the map it shows a pencil line for the river, and I can see why now. In some places it is only 20 feet across in a canyon whose walls are anywhere from 500-800 feet high.

The new paddle I fashioned out of wood and rope and duct tape worked fairly decently, and it helped me get through a few of the tougher rapids. It was a bit heavy, slightly awkward, but I would have paid $100 for it if I had to with four days to go without a paddle. By now we are a little more familiar with rafting and are going over some smaller waterfalls, that is 3-5ft high. But, unfortunately confidence can sometimes be your downfall. On the last rapid of the day, my kayak went straight into the water, filled up, and instantly flipped over. Once again everything flew out of the raft and was scattered around the river. I was drug down through some rapids, bouncing over rocks. Jason had gone first and his boat was hung up on a rock in the middle of the river and he was standing there in the middle, on top of a little boulder wondering what to do. I came floating down, and the current pushed me right under his boat, which swept both the boat and I further downstream. Once again everything was scattered for both of us; and both kayaks were stuck on the rocks. By the time we collected everything, YES BELIEVE IT OR NOT, my paddle was gone AGAIN– the one I had just made. Jason then pulled his paddle apart into 2 halves, and now we are reduced to each having a half a paddle and using it like a canoe paddle.
Three spots stand out in my mind from yesterday. The first was an incredibly narrow section of the river. The walls were sheer for hundreds of feet, and the water had completely slowed down. Way up on top the trees were growing out of the walls at 90 degrees, and it was so incredibly quiet. There wasn’t a single bird, or anything to make noise. The canyon walls were dug out at certain places so it looked like it was pocketed with small caves.

A second place where the canyon narrowed was also fed by a side stream from far above, and the water poured over the side in constant sheets like rain. As we rounded the bend, the walls were so overhung that it looked like we had to go through a small window just to get to the other side. The rain falling through the opening made it so you had to pass under the water. It was beautiful, truly beautiful.

The third spot is no doubt the most impressive spot of the trip. This spot well deserves to be called the pen-ultimate event. We ended up camping right next it so we could visit it again in the morning. At this spot the river actually goes underground. It narrows, and narrows, and slowly the walls begin to engulf you, and the sliver of the sky itself gets smaller and smaller until suddenly you are completely inside.

It reminded me of some of the greatest tombs in Egypt because of the grandeur – but this time it was all-natural. The rooftop was so incredibly high up, which made it very light, and hundreds of screaming parakeets flew through the cavern over and over. The acoustics were incredible and the noise of the parakeets was just deafening. At this point, the river actually cuts through a portion of the mountain. The water had slowed down almost to a lake and it was amazing to simply sit through it and let the boats float through it for over a half an hour.

We camped on the outside of the cave, on a nice little sandbar. Inside the cave, I was looking at something and came across a coiled up snake, the type of which I had never seen before. It definitely looked poisonous if you go with the old adage that the more beautiful a snake, the more deadly it is. For dinner we were so hungry since neither of us had eaten any lunch, so we cooked up some potato soup that supposedly fed 8 people, and ate it all.

We had been wet all day, and it was so nice to dry out and get some warm soup in our bodies. This is the most amazing spot on the river.

Unfortunately the canyon is too narrow to get a GPS reading, so we don’t know exactly where we are. I’m looking outside my tent now, and all I see is thick overgrown trees protruding off the canyon. Even though there is one spot where the walls are low and I might possibly want to climb out, the thickness of the undergrowth is actually impenetrable. Birds are flying all over and making many weird sounds.

Thursday June 10th 2004

W. 93’45.20 N 16’57.65

Day six – The River worked us pretty hard yesterday. As soon as we left the cave we got stuck in some major boulders and white water. It took us all morning to get through a 300-yard section of river because we had to keep portaging our luggage and our boats. That is a lot of work, let me tell you, especially on some really slippery rocks with fast water all around. We ran into our first problem before we even started. We decided to explore the river cave one last time before we took off for the day. But before we packed up I punctured my raft. I hit the canyon wall at the right angle and put a little gouge in it. We got back to camp and supposedly the glue took 12 hours to set, but all we gave it was about 30-45minutes, and we were on the water again. After getting through the really hard portaging area, we saw a pool that was full of fish and decided to try and get a few. I threw in a chunk of granola bar, and the fishtails started flipping in the water. Woah, that was exciting. Really the hardest part about fishing that hole was getting the granola bar to stick on my hook. Very quickly we had a small stringer of six fish. They looked like some sort of carp, or white fish, it was hard to tell. A couple of the ones I caught were actually a fairly decent size.

It’s been three days now that we haven’t been able to read a GPS coordinate, and we thought for sure that yesterday we would have reached the Rio Negro river tributary. To our surprise we still aren’t there, so who knows how far there is to go still. Well the river might have started easily, but by the end of yesterday we were begging for calm floating waters, so that we wouldn’t have to do so much hard work. After being so tired from the portaging, and being wet all day long, the river had us begging for mercy. Individually the rapids are in fact not that bad, but it’s the collective effect of getting your raft constantly swamped, then constantly bailing the water out. That is what tires you out. At one spot we found a huge opening in the canyon wall, and scrambled up to it.

It was a cave that went quite a ways down to a standing pool of crystal clear, cold water. On our way back, we nonchalantly ended up taking a different shaft, and got totally disoriented. It was a huge cave and there were several ways to go. It was amazing how easy it was to take a wrong turn. After going a ways down the secondary shaft which became very low so that we had to duck for a while, we came to another water source that looked like it was flowing out to the river in a different route. But, we backtracked and found our way out. It was nice to see the light again.

On the last rapid of the day, Jason slammed into a log and blew out his raft. We had to limp along with duct tape on it and made it to a nice wide sand bar for the night’s camp. The spot was a wide sweeping circle of the river and made an excellent open and flat camp.

Barely had we got our camp set up that the sky started rolling with thunder and lightning and it rained all night. We had set up a nice little lean-to with our tarp alongside the tent, and so we were able to have some warm potatoes and bacon soup and listen to the rain pour outside. It was so nice because the rain brought some freshness with it, and some cool air. It was so soothing, and the noises all around us were terrific. We saw a black snake go across the sand earlier in the camp setup. The fireflies at night are so pretty. They light up the canyon all over the place with their little glow. Well today we had better hit the river quickly and hopefully get closer to the lake. The temperature here is always constant. At night you can just lay down on your mat and be totally comfortable with or without a sheet. If we didn’t have to have the rain flap on, we’d get a lot more of that breeze, but as it is, the few whisks we get feel quite nice.

Saturday June 12th 2004

6:00 am
Aaaaaahhhh it’s Saturday night and we’re sleeping comfortably on a soft bed in Tuxtla Gutierrez at a hotel for $90 pesos a night ($8). Thursday night we camped at a large bend on the river, the last bend before the river widens up again and later meets the Rio Negro tributary. By then we were sort of hoping the rapids were over, and sure enough they were. Take your choice though, because after a while not only were the rapids over, but so was the current – and then comes the paddling.

This part was the last float on the river part before the lake, and the river was absolutely gorgeous, especially around the Rio Negro area (both a few miles before, and a few after). It was a really nice float all the way until the flat water. The canyon opened up quite a ways and many of the bends had large flocks of birds, all sorts of pelicans and fish-catcher type of birds.
One of the prettier spots I thought was the spot where the Rio Negro and the La Venta rivers joined. There were big wide sandbars and a lot of vegetation. I was floating along the bank and saw three wild boars rooting around in the ground. They were Grey and sort of looked like Javelinas. As soon as one saw me, he snorted and the whole pack took off.
Another interesting creature was a bird that made its nest like a huge bag dangling from the branches. They have a colony on one particular tree and there would be up to a hundred bags hanging from that tree. Those birds had very bright yellow tails.

After a while, the river stopped flowing and we had to resort to paddling a very long ways. When we came out into the lake, our first people we had had seen in seven days were 2 very tribal looking boys on a dugout canoe. They were fishing. They would string out a line across both sides of the canyon and keep it afloat every couple hundred feet with a plastic bottle.

That day was a terribly long paddle on the lake. I gave up thinking we might find someone with a motor boat since the only people we saw had dugout canoes from a tree. At one point the sun had beaten us so badly, we thought it was the worst heat we’d ever felt.

Within a few hours, a storm blew in and when the wind shifted to our favor we tied our kayaks together, and held up a tarp between the two of us, and got propelled along the lake with the sail. Whenever the wind would inflate our sails, we could really move fast. This helped us gain some good distance. When the wind stopped, the rain continued beating down, and by then we were freezing and we had to jump into the lake just to warm up. The lake water felt so hot, it was like a bath – CRAZY Chiapas! By nightfall we pulled over on a bank and set up for a very uncomfortable night.

In the morning, lo and behold were some Mexican men digging sand right outside our camp to bake them into bricks. They actually had a boat, so we hired the driver to take us to the bridge at Raudalles. First he had to unload the sandbags at his little village on the side of the lake somewhere. Everyone was watching us – this was a pretty primitive village. Then his whole family put on their best clothes and they all came for the ride to town looking good in their modern clothes. The man even put on some boots. The ride took two hours in the blazing sun, without the slightest bit of shade.

These people are so incredibly nice, but I’m sure they live off very little money, but they probably live ok. We gave the man a lot of money because he was so nice. We gave him $400 pesos which is about $38 American dollars. Every dollar was worth the 15 hours of paddling we would have had to do to cross the lake if we hadn’t bumped into him. At the dam everyone was so curious about our boats and our paddles because they were so light, and just deflated into our bags. We took a short taxi into the center of Raudales for $20 pesos and bought some hot tortillas, bananas, and soda, and had a feast on some fresh food.

The people don’t seem to see many gringos so they basically left us alone. They are nice people though. From Raudales we paid $120 pesos (10 bucks), for both of us to go back to Tuxtla Gutierrez and there we rented a hotel at Hotel Del Pasaje for $90 pesos a night.

The rest was recuperation, and after a few feasts and plenty of rest we were more than ready to get back to our families. Last night we just absolutely feasted on the town and came home stuffed after 6 tacos a piece and a huge juice squeeze of pineapples, papayas, and oranges, and of course a magnum chocolate ice cream bar. Ahhhh one more night before home – Meech and Rynn I miss them so!