So we embarked on our journey on friday, leaving for the small town of Cuetzalan, Puebla. Situated in the middle of the forest, it offered some cool cave exploring and waterfall view etc. When we arrived, we got settled in at the Hotel Posada, for only $8/night!
We stayed up to play poker for a little while which was fun, and then out on the town. We had dinner at this small restaurant around the corner from our hotel, which actually got my order wrong 3 times during the weekend, I think we only at there maybe 4 times. Way to go.The city itself was very quaint, and similar to what I would imagine an old italian city to be. But i've never been to Italy so I could be way off. Friday night
we hired a tour guide to take us a few places the following mornings so..We woke up early and decended into the small city, found our tour guide who took us to an archeological zone nearyby which was pretty cool!
Afterwords we took a long path through the forest to come to a watering hole with a huge waterfall pouring down into it. The seven of us changed and ran(while screaming) into the water which was cold as ice. It was quite a spectacle for the Mexicans that were watching(and laughing) all the gringos run into the freezing cold water. Truth be told only Joe and I out of the 7 are true gringos. There was a couple reppelling down the face right next to the waterfall. My buddy James went and asked the couple how much it would cost to rappell(we didn't know they were just a couple doing it for fun), they said nothing and that they would take us up if we wanted. So James and I got in the harness and climbed up this slippery, wet and dangerous slope to the top of the Waterfall about 100 feet up. James went first and rappelled down the face, and I followed after. I was trying to hop a bit, before realizing that the guy at the bottom was yelling "camina!" (walk!), James and I had both previously learned a belay-style rappelling which includes a belay, or a specific type of brake. This way you can leap a bit off the rock face and loosen up the break so that you're jumping down(and backwards) and allowing gravity to bring you back to the face. We didn't know that we were doing static-rappelling. Jumping off the face doesn't work, let me tell you. It wasn't like lightly jumping off the wall and returning to it easily, it was like jumping on solid ground and returning harshly only that you're 80 feet in the air, sideways/upsidedown. So after we figured out we weren't supposed to jump, we calmly rappelled and walked down the face, with the waterfall surging only feet from where we were. After getting to the bottom we bought a few beers for our new friends and thanked them repeatedly.
After our journey to the waterfall, we return to Cuetzalan and took a bus to a network of caves to explore. We were all exhausted and hungry but spent an hour underground in a cave. Every 50 feet or so we would arrive at a ladder or something to climb to a new section or descend to a different area of the caverns. We arrove at one point where there was a long ladder that descended about 3 stories, and next to it, the rope option that descended to the same place. The rope was tied at the top and bottom and had knots in it to let yourself down, the ladder was just secured and made of wood. I was feeling courageous so I decided to take the ropes option. Scary idea. Rappelling 100 feet down a rock face next to a waterfall was nothing compared to this. I was not secured anywhere, and although it was only 30 or so feet down, the rope was drenched in wet mud making it very slippery. My hands burned as I descended down the rope, being as careful as possible. If I slipped I would have a nice 20 foot fall down to pure rock. Not to mention the way that the rocks formed in the caves they made spear like hills on the ground from mud and gravel falling over time from the roof. I luckily made it down in one peice, obviously, or else you would be reading my obituary rather than my blog.
We exited the caves to a grave-yard like movie scene. Cuetzalan is well known for being very misty and cloudy at night. We stood in the middle of a field at night time with nothing but mist surrounding us. A truly erie experience.
We returned, took showers, napped, got some food and rested a bit before going out into town. Being such a small town we were suprised to find that there was in fact a club. After paying the $30 peso entrance fee, we entered the club that was playing salsa music. Come to find that we were the only people there. when I say only, I don't mean it wasn't very crowded, I mean that for the next 2 hours we, our group of 10(we picked up a few americans at the hotel), were the only people in the club (apart from the bartenders and the 1 DJ). Needless to say it was histerical.
The following day we took another journey to the other well-known waterfall. We had to descend a short ways to a small bank. The water was just as cold as before. We hid our things in the woods and started to cross the bank. In order to get to the waterfall, we had to traverse through the river a ways, with no land trail to get to where we were going. I wanted to take pictures so I wrapped my camera in a plastic bag and swam with it, making sure as to not get it wet. It was beautiful!
To be continued...
