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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!