Scientists have an ongoing debate about the existence of the "wanderlust gene" that may explain why some people have more of a compulsion to travel than others. If it does exist I certainly have it.
It's common for many to go through a stage of wanting to travel before settling down, but for me, it's been a lifelong calling that shows no signs of slowing, a growing feeling to explore the world and experience new places.
In my most recent adventure, I returned to Chiapas, Mexico for the fourth time to see what I missed on my last visits, the Sumidero Canyons, El Chilflon, and Los Lagos De Montebello.
San Cristobal De Las Casas makes a great base for many of the adventures Chiapas has to offer so I found a place to call my temporary home there, plugged into the local culture and planned my river adventure to the Sumidero Canyons.
You can read more about San Cristobal in Discovering San Cristobal De Las Casas Mexico - In Search Of The Best Cup Of Coffee And A Shot Of Magic --- by
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain
With my magical cup of brew in one hand and my Canon t7i camera in the other, I climbed on to the roof of the hotel I was staying in, the Diego Mazariegos, and in the crisp, cool morning air snapped this picture.
View from the rooftop of the Diego Mazariegos hotel in San Cristobal de Las Casa, Chiapas, Mexico
Soaking up a view like this from the heart of the city, I pondered what makes some people so prone to routines much different than my own, experiencing the beauty of the world only through their screensavers, content to live vicariously with their bucket list only half full. Maybe there isn't a wanderlust gene after all and I'm just a freak of nature, but it's hard for me to imagine we don't all carry that gene with us. How else do you explain humanity's bent towards exploration?
Downing my last sip of coffee with a satisfying gulp, I double checked my camera bag list and headed for the prearranged meetup point. Greeted by a smiling man named Jesus, I climbed into the van.
As we hit the highway at 70 miles an hour we descended from an altitude of 7,218 feet (2200 meters) in San Cristobal to 1,713 feet (522 meters) in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Peering over the guardrails you could see the valley floor peeking through the clouds below. From this vantage point, there's a sensation of being in an airplane, hovering above the clouds. Maybe I was actually in heaven, riding through nirvana, and Jesus was driving.
I remember the first time I met Jesus. He was a bartender in a Mexican cantina and mixed a mean Margarita. As I looked at him now driving me through a heavenly bliss, I noticed he put on a few pounds since the last time we met. Too many tacos I imagine, but hey, who's counting?
View from the balcony of my room at the Diego Mazariegos
Getting to the Sumidero Canyons is easy if you discount getting up at the crack of dawn with a head full of Tequila, but the strong cup of the locally-grown coffee and the splash of cool mountain air on your face is enough to sober you up for the 1-hour ride to the boat dock in Tuxtla Gutierrez.
The incremental drops in altitude were accompanied by incremental increases in temperature as we reached the boat launch in record time.
Jumping on a speedboat with about 20 others and zooming up the wide, fast-flowing Grijalva River, one has to marvel at the sheer beauty of it all. The welcomed fresh air against my face made me feel fully awake now and my blood was flowing as fast as the current below me.
Sumidero Canyon (Spanish: Cañón del Sumidero) is a deep natural canyon located just north of the city of Chiapa de Corzo in the state of Chiapas, in southern Mexico. The canyon’s creation began around the same time as the Grand Canyon in the U.S. state of Arizona, by a crack in the area’s crust and subsequent erosion by the Grijalva River, which still runs through it. Sumidero Canyon has vertical walls which reach as high as 1,000 meters (3,300 ft), with the river turning up to 90 degrees during the 13-kilometre (8.1 mi) length of the narrow passage.
The canyon is surrounded by the Sumidero Canyon National Park, a federally protected natural area of Mexico which extends for 21,789 hectares (53,840 acres) over four municipalities of the state of Chiapas. This park is administered by the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (CONANP). Most of the vegetation in the park is low- to-medium-height deciduous rainforest, with small areas of mixed pine-oak forest and grassland. At the north end of the canyon is the Chicoasén Dam and its artificial reservoir, one of several on the Grijalva River, which is important for water storage and the generation of hydroelectric power in the region. Wikipedia
The boat captain opened the engine to full throttle like a man on a mission who knew where he was going and just how to get there, when suddenly and without warning, he cut the engine and turned the boat in a 360-degree spin, splashing water as he turned. 'Had we forgotten something?', I wondered.
One's destination is never a place, but always a new way of seeing things. - Henry Miller
Soon we realized he had spotted something worth having a closer look and lazily sleeping at the river's edge. An American River Crocodile, easily 12-foot long, was resting in the sun with a toothy grin that made me wonder what he had for breakfast. Whatever it was it looked satisfied and well-fed which gave me a false sense of security as we approached it, where I snapped this shot of its mysterious grin.
River Crocodile (Crocodylus Acutus) on the Grijalva River in the Sumidero Canyons
Taking photographs from a fast-moving boat work best with a fast shutter speed and a zoom lens, the fast shutter helps to freeze the shot and avoids blurry images from a moving boat, while the zoom lens with image stabilization helps you crop in on your subject. I used a Canon EF-S 18–135mm lens with image stabilization and a UV filter to prevent any water splashed from hitting the glass.
I was the only person on the boat with a DSLR camera, most people these days carry cell phones. Call me old school but I love my camera and it feels like an extension of my hand at this point. The Canon t7i takes great pics and I don't leave home without it.
Our journey continued into the sun and toward the canyons when we made a turn around the rock walls where this view unfolded. It took my breath away and I almost forget to take a shot, but regaining my composure I started snapping away.
The Sumidero Canyons climbs to a height of 3,280 feet (1,000 meters)
It's impossible to get a feel for the scale of its enormity from a picture alone, but it's huge and a monument to the thriving wildlife that lives in its shadows. If God was a gardener this would be his vertical Garden of Eden.
A closer look through the vast scene you start to notice details that are easy to miss. Like looking through a microscope the dramas of life unfold one at a time and it is only then you realize how big this place is.
Travel leaves you speechless then turns you into a storyteller - Ibn Batutta
Living things are all around you if you can just hone in on them. Something was moving in the trees as we slowed the boat and approached the commotion. All you could see at first was leaves rustling in the forest, but the closer we got it became clear the natives were coming to greet us half way.
As we passed under an overhanging tree branch a Howler monkey acting as an ambassador, swung its way to the tip of the limb, as curious about us as we were about it.
Sumidero Canyons Howler Monkey
The captain made it clear that they never feed the monkeys, who would not take to the food we eat very well, so I had to wonder...
What is it that makes that monkey want to go out on a limb to get as close to total strangers as it possibly can if not for the lure of food?
Are they as curious about us as we are about them? Perhaps this one monkey carries the wanderlust gene as well and all he wanted was to get in the boat and travel up the river to wherever we were going. I felt for that monkey and sensed its burning curiosity, taking comfort knowing it wasn't living it's life vicariously.
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine
Continuing around another irresistible bend in the river more spectacular views unfolded like a chapter in a never-ending adventure story, a page in a novel full of surprises. These cliffs are so grand that forests growing on its face look like tiny moss beds forming on a rock with each green crevice offering refuge to the life within.
Once again we cut the engines and everyone on the boat was silenced by the view, listening only to the sounds of the water rushing past us and the birds speaking from the trees. Then the captain prompted us to cry out in unison, "Ma-he-co!", and the canyons responded with echoes of their own, sounding like God had spoken.
The engines roared alive and pushed us further up the river to the famous Árbol de Navidad (Christmas Tree waterfall). There are thousands of pictures taken of this waterfall that resembles a Christmas tree and all of them look identical. Boring.
It baffles me to see people taking selfies of themselves in front of landmarks as if to document they were really there, somehow not believing that the photo they took of the place itself is not enough to prove them ever having been there. True to the stereotype, people started standing in the boat to snap pics of themselves in front of this famous waterfall.
Wanting to capture it a different way but being captive myself on this boat, I was at the mercy of the captain controlling my position and my time to shoot it. As luck would have it he briefly passed under the falls where I snapped this shot that looks like a waterfall falling from the clouds above.
Thinking I really am in heaven now and must have done something right in my last life to be so lucky, this is one of my favorite shots of the trip, only having seconds to shoot it as we glided under the falls. It looks like a waterfall raining from the heavens. I think I'll make a print of this and hang it on my wall.
Passing under the Árbol de Navidad at Sumidero Canyons, for a few seconds I felt like I was showering in heaven
After my baptism under the waterfall, a bird swooped above my head as if to welcome me to the real world. Switching my camera to a multiple-shot mode and taking aim, I pointed and fired away hoping one good image would stick.
Approaching the Chicoasen Dam the cliff walls seemed to slowly melt to half their size when in truth they were only submerged under the water held back by the dam walls. Signs of human settlement quilted over the foothills at the water's edge in patches of corn and potato crops.
The dam was designed in the early 1970s and constructed between 1974 and 1980 under topographical and geological constraints. It is an earth and rockfill embankment type with a height of 261 m (856 ft) and length of 485 m (1,591 ft). It withholds a reservoir of 1,613,000,000 m3 (1,307,680 acre⋅ft) and lies at the head of a 52,600 km2 (20,309 sq mi) catchment area. It is the tallest dam in North America and produces more power than the Hoover Dam,running turbines that supply 80% of Mexico, half of Guatemala, and most of Central America with electricity.
The Chicoasen Dam (officially known as Manuel Moreno Torres)
We started our return back to the dock and I continued snapping pictures along the way, doing my best to capture some birds as we zipped past them. It's really amazing what you can do with a camera these days even from a speeding boat and was impressed to see so many shots were in focus when I poured through them back in my room.
Digital photography has really improved a lot of photographers ability to create great photos and we could do now what was unimaginable not so long ago.
We were moving so fast now that I switched out of manual mode into aperture priority mode, letting the camera make some decisions on its own on what shutter speed and ISO it should use so I could focus on framing and composing the shots. Grabbing as many shots as I could was easier this way.
Once we were back on solid ground and climbed in the van, we headed to the nearby town of Chiapa De Corzo to have some authentic, road-side tacos for lunch, prepared by a woman who looked like someone's grandmother, then walked around town for a bit to stretch the legs before the ride back to San Cristobal.
“Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” – Anonymous
Located in the square of Chiapa de Corzo is La Pila Fountain, a Moorish-style, diamond-shaped, brick structure built in 1562 and attributed to Dominican brother Rodrigo de León.
La Pila Fountain in Chiapa de Corzo, Chiapas, Mexico
Daydreaming as I peered out the window of the van on the ride back to town at the cultivated crops planted on hills so steep you wondered why people even bothered planting them, my belly was as full as my mind was full of the images of beauty I had seen this day, and it dawned on me that to plant hills this steep with corn one must be pretty hungry and really need the crop. Imagine the work involved in planting and harvesting corn on mountains pitched at a 45-degree angle. You would probably burn as many calories growing it as you gained eating it.
I hope you enjoyed reading about my adventure in the Sumidero Canyons of Chiapas, Mexico and will come back again to read about my next Chiapas adventures later this week visiting the San Vincente River, the El Chiflo Waterfalls, and the San Cristobal Markets.
NOTE All images photographed and edited by me on a Canon t7i with the exception of the thumbnail image of Arbol de Navidad credited above.
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