ODO: 317,446
We spent our morning driving around town looking for water. Just about every town has a great purificada, but figuring out when things in Mexico are open or if they exist where Google says they do, is the hard part. All filled up, we headed out of town on the new highway, a long straight, steep grade up into the mountains. Part way up the hill the truck started to overheat…uh oh…This road didn’t offer many options to pull over so we were forced to drive with the engine intermittently blowing sweet chemical steam every so often. Once we found a safe pull out we stopped to asses the damage. The radiator had evacuated almost all of its coolant. Good thing we stopped for water. We got to work refilling the radiator, slowly, since it was still very hot and spewing steam. During this process the weather decided to help, and it started to rain big fat drops of water. Soaking wet, we climbed back in and crossed our fingers that the engine was ok. Like I said, this road was steep, we gained 5000ft of elevation in less than an hour, which took us through some very dense clouds. Back on our AutoZone tour, we stopped at the next one we came across and bought a new radiator cap. Our theory was that our radiator cap was no longer sealing the radiator and holding pressure, which we discovered after having to stop several more times along the hill to add more water.
Trying not to stress about the truck too much, we decided to stop at a park that was advertised to have a cave. It was a short loop through the various speleothems (fancy science word for cave formations), and helped calm our nerves a little. It had been a day, so we headed to our planned campground early. We found a spot by the river near another van. Whenever we stay in a hotel the camper ends up thrashed, so first order of business was putting everything back where it goes. Then dinner. Then bedtime. Our van neighbor serenaded us while playing her drum for a little while after dark. For the first time since Durango it was cold overnight! Cold enough that we almost deployed the extra blanket.
Waterfall hike day! Waterfalls are a tricky one, there are so many great ones in the PNW, it has given us, as we’ve learned, unreasonable expectations. El Chiflon has two semi resorts, one on each side of the river, that fight for your business. We guessed and went to the right. The hike up was a mix of stairs and dirt path along a beautiful river, in the shade of jungle trees. There were butterflies everywhere. Still a little sore from our last hike, we agreed to only go halfway. It turns out we misread the map, and accidentally ended up at the top. It was amazing. We climbed the final platform and got blasted by the waterfall spray. Soaking wet, we loaded up and headed into the town of Uninajab. This is a town that has more water than it knows what to do with. Every house had a pool, and there was a giant community complex of pools where we were able to camp. We went for a quick dip before bed. We were woken up in the middle of the night by a raging wind storm shaking the truck. We got up to use the bathroom and discovered dogs had stolen one of Berne’s shoes.
In the morning we were off to our third pyramid, Tenam-Puenta. We drove out of Uninajab up and down a fun, twisty, steep dirt road to get there. This was our least favorite set of ruins so far. Not much remained, and it was a small site. Or it was because of the family that took over the entire space and made it feel very crowded. When we finished exploring we headed towards the nearest town for groceries and water. We happened upon delicious al pastor street tacos while we were doing our chores. Despite what everyone says, taco stands are not on every corner, and it can be a long time between pastor wheels. Our destination for the night was Parque Nacional Lagunas de Montebello, which is free to enter if you arrive after 5pm. Different than National Parks in the US, you pay to enter, as well as pay for each stop inside the park during business hours. We took full advantage of being there after hours and stopped at every single lake to take a look for free. All of them were beautiful, it looked like the PNW, socked in grey weather, dark dense forest, but bright blue water. The skies opened up just as we arrived to our camp spot, so we set up quickly and cozied into the camper. Berne continued his bad shoe luck. He got up to smoke and he was attacked by a swarm of biting ants. He was pretty upset. The storm overnight got worse, the wind getting strong enough to shake the truck for a long time, no one slept well again. Sure seems like this is the windy season…
One of the issues we had with the camper when we first bought it was water intrusion, aka, it leaks when it rains. We put a lot of effort into sealing up every hole, crack, weld, rivet, you name it, to stop this. And we were very successful. Until recently. KoKo found water inside the channel all of our electrical runs though, not a great way to start the day. We couldn’t find a clear leaking spot, so we cleaned it up and will be paying attention to it until we do.
Our route today took us along the Guatemalan border, it was nothing but lush green mountains and valleys the entire day, oh, and a speed bump what felt like every 100 feet. We were trying to camp along what was supposed to be a lovely blue river, but being the rainy season, the water was high and brown and raging. Along with the speed bumps were pot holes. Giant pot holes. Everywhere. And in some spots the entire lane had been swallowed by a sink hole, the river, or just fallen off the cliff. Maybe that’s why every vehicle we saw was an 80’s Toyota pickup. After a long battle with the road we came to a town where we saw our first monkey of the trip! We ended up staying in the Las Guacamayas Centro Ecoturistico, a fancy (and completely empty) resort on the river. We saw spider monkeys, macaws, and heard howler monkeys. Howler monkeys sound like a nightmare. We got to enjoy a private dinner in the restaurant. Having an entire resort to ourselves was pretty cool.
Another morning, another pyramid. Almost. There are SO MANY Mayan ruins in this area it feels overwhelming and impossible to visit them all. The one we were on our way to see turned out to be somewhat of a tourist scam. You pay an entrance fee to drive to a parking lot where you then pay again for a taxi to take you the rest of the way up the road. None of this was explained when we paid the entry fee, which we didn’t appreciate, so we continued on our way. As we got close to our destination for the night we came across some stuck locals. We love stuck locals! They had managed to back into a bank and couldn’t get out. Winch to the rescue! Ten minutes later we had them on their way again. We arrived at our waterfall camp exhausted from the heat and humidity. The smart move would’ve been to get in the water, instead we set up all of our fans and tried to have a relaxing evening.
We woke up hot and cranky. First order of business get in the water! The great thing about staying at a popular tourist spot is you’re there before anyone else. We had all the waterfalls and all the pools to ourselves for about an hour. It was a pretty amazing experience. There were several levels of waterfalls cascading over the rocks into several pools of various sizes filled with turquoise water. We cooled off in the water for a while before heading back to the truck to make breakfast. Cooking overheated us again so we headed back down to the pools for one more cool down before it was time to go. While we headed back to the truck the second time it started to rain. Once we were at the truck it started to monsoon. We waited out the deluge before hitting the road. Our route was so filled with pot holes Berne was on super high alert all day dodging them. We were in an in-between area with no camping, so we found one of the three hotels in the area. They had a restaurant that only served ham sandwiches and eggs.
In the morning we decided to take the long way so we could drive along the Gulf of Mexico, which made the outside temperature spike up to 97F, and the sky fill with swarms of dragonflies. We visited the Mayan ruins of Edzna, which were our favorite ruins so far. It was a sizeable complex with several different pyramids, some in amazing condition. There were carvings we could climb and touch, which is always KoKo’s favorite. There were iguanas all over the place, hanging out in groups in the grass and climbing all over the ruins. We even saw a Coati, which is a central American relative of the raccoon. We arrived at 4pm and they closed at 5pm, so we were on a bit of a speed mission through the ruins. We found a campground just down the road that came with dogs, cows and lots of horseflies. We didn’t spend much time outside that evening.
