A quiet day in Seybaplaya

 

It's the last morning of real holiday time: soon we'll embark on the bus rides that will take us closer and closer to the airport, interrupted for one more night in Valladolid to break it up. Tonight we'll be in the same hotel where we spent second night of our trip. Of course, since our bus rides have been an essential part of the experience I suppose much can still happen. 

Here we are in Seybaplaya, a small fishing village half an hour south of Campeche City. We had chosen this un-touristy place because we saw how close to the ocean it is on the way to Xpujil – ages ago, it seems now – and we really wanted to at least walk on a beach before we left.

The bus was to leave Villahermosa at a quarter to eleven on Monday, and the ride to Champotón, the town closest to Seybaplaya, was supposed to last about five hours, lots of time before the onset of darkness to find out about a way to get to our destination. Of course it didn't happen that way: we finally reached Champotón at seven pm! Luck was on our side, however: the connecting bus that would take us to Seybaplaya left twenty minutes later. I asked a fellow passenger to let me know where to get off, and as luck would have it, it was her stop as well. She proceded to take us all the way to the hotel, making sure we remembered the landmarks and corners, counted the blocks correctly, so that we'd find our way around the next day. We've encountered so much kindness here, and the interaction with the people are another important reason why this trip has been wonderful.

As I mentioned earlier this place is not one sought out by tourists. The centre of town, removed by one block from the malecón, the pier, is dominated by a plaza and a red church. Lots of little stores sell lots of things, a small supermarket - “Super Willy”, the kind we've encountered in other small towns – has much of what one might need, but there is no restaurant in sight, nor is there any place to sell beer. That happens along the malecón, though restaurants are rather sparse even there: as I said, this is a fishing village, not a tourist destination. Boats are docked all along the pier, hundreds of them, with names like Anna Maria, Josue, Camilla, Claudia, etc., often with a Roman number behind the name so that there might be three or even five with the same name, indicating, to me, that some owners must have several boats. That has to be the case, because there don't seem to be enough people here in this town for all the boats. We haven't been able to watch them when they came in with their catches, probably weren't near the pier at the right time, but whenever we walked by men were working on their nets.

I had read about a beach only about three kilometres from here called Payucán, popular especially during Holy Week before Easter. It sounded like we'd find beach restaurants there, maybe even hotels, and looking at Google Maps it was possible to get there on foot, walking along the pier for most of the way. That's what we decided to do yesterday morning: the beach, the ocean, were what we were here for, after all. 

After several hundred metres the paved sidewalk ended and we continued on a dirt trail for a while, the ocean on one side, shrubs on the other. A couple of times a foul odour indicated another bag filled with remnants of fish had been dumped along the way, a cloud of flies rising from it. Garbage is still a huge problem everywhere, even though it seems to be collected in many places. Some effort is made to recycle in cities, but most often garbage, often in huge amounts, is just dumped by the side of the road.

A sign announced that we had reached Payucan, but there was no indication that this was anything like a beach resort. Palapas, the open huts covered with palm-frond roofs, lined the mostly rocky beach, but they looked dilapidated and abandoned, garbage and lanky weeds abounded here, too. I imagine that everything will be spruced up for local holiday times, but on this day the only person we saw was a man working with a weed whacker near the only hotel – also closed right now – at the end of the beach. 

Johann went swimming for a while, and I just sat on a rock and enjoyed the sound of the small waves.

In the afternoon we headed into the opposite direction along the malecón in search of something to eat. I had found three restaurants along the pier online, and we checked them out, one by one, had planned to eat at the furthest one where my favourite, ceviche, was on the menu. The chicken and other meats that were also listed were not available, however, so Johann, not a seafood person, would have had to go hungry. Thus we just had a beer there and, as so often, the server brought a snack consisting of chips and – oh luck of lucks! - a plate of the very ceviche I craved.

We walked back to “Mario”, the smallest, least fancy restaurant, closest to our hotel, and ate a tasty dinner there, just before their closing time at 5:30 or six, right in time for the sunset.

Orchídeas Moxviquil, Botanic Garden in San Cristóbal

 

For the second day in San Cristóbal we were looking for a hike we could do independently and without too much travel. I found a nice-looking hike online, about two and a half hours through the cloud forest to Cerro Huitepec. We figured out where the colectivos left for the five-kilometre drive to the entrance of the Nature Reserve to which it belongs, on the way to the village of San Juan Chamula and were pretty much set to leave at eleven. Just to make sure about the trail itself I read up on it once more and found a post from someone the day before who said she had been denied entry because she didn't have a guide. There was no mention of the need of a guide in previous posts, but we certainly didn't want to encounter that situation after being dropped off by a colectivo. San Juan Chamula would have been an interesting place to visit, too: a very old village where Maya and Spanish culture and especially religion have melded in a unique way.

I also found another alternative, the Botanic Garden 'Orchídeas Moxviquil' at the northern edge of town. It sounded like a good option: we'd not only be able to see the orchids in their greenhouses, but a 2 km hiking trail is also part of it. Together with the 40 minutes it would take to walk there from our hotel we would get our exercise in for the day.

Following the instructions from Google Maps, helped by inquiring to make sure we were still on the right way, we found the entrance to Orchídeas Moxquivil. It started as a private initiative to rescue orchids from areas of Chiapas where they are in danger of extinction through human intervention of one kind or other. Chiapas has about 400 species of orchids, and nearly 60% of them are represented here in two large greenhouses, about 25,000 plants in total. The hope of Orchídeas Moxviquil is to be a not only a botanic garden but also to educate people from towns and villages around Chiapas to learn and then help with the preservation efforts where they live.

We paid the entrance fee – 90 pesos per person if you want to do both the hike and wander through the orchid greenhouses and the gardens – and decided to do the hike first: there was a chance of thundershowers in the afternoon, and we didn't want to miss out on the hike. The trail, well marked and easy to follow but not highly used, led up steeply in switchbacks through the forest. The many beautiful bromeliads provided a welcome excuse to stop often and catch my breath. 

Especially on the sun side of the mountain it was hot even under the canopy of the trees that we didn't leave once on the hike. Later, after the trail took a turn, the forest floor became more slippery and we saw more ferns – an amazing variety of them.

Close to the highest part of the trail we passed a deep hole in the ground. Mossy stone steps led down to its edge, but Johann, as usual not scared to go as far as he could, didn't see any water at the bottom. We were on our way downhill shortly after that and reached the garden area after a good hour of walking.

Now it was time to explore the orchid area of the nature reserve. Two greenhouses, one with plants from the low-lying areas and very warm and humid, the other housing orchids from the cloud forest further up, are home to an amazing array of orchids of all sizes. It is hard to take it all in; there are so many. I walked through slowly, and the longer I was there the more I paid attention to the smaller plants, their varying colour, texture, shape of leaf and, in some cases, flowers. It is difficult to write about this, and I think the photos will speak for themselves. 

 

I am glad we came here!

 

Sumidero Canyon

It's our last morning in San Cristóbal de las Casas, and, after two and a half days here, it soon will be time to pack our bags again and move on. Again fireworks are going off although it's only 6:30 am, and the “Hotel Real del Valle” is slowly waking up. We are the only non-Mexican guests, as far as I can determine, and the volume of conversations in the hallways and lobby is quite a bit different than it would be in a hotel in Canada. I feel good here among these people whose temperament is so different from mine.

We didn't visit the many churches of this city, only saw the facades of two: the Cathedral de San Cristóbal Mártir and the Santo Domingo Church, the latter still closed after a major earthquake in 2017. Streets around the main plaza in the historic centre are crowded with people and vehicles especially right now during the pre-Christmas festivities. Many shops offer beautiful handicrafts and jewellery, much of it made from amber which has been mined in Chiapas since pre-Hispanic times. There seem to be more eateries than people, some fancy restaurants and an incredible amount of places on the street. “Pollo” - chicken – is the meat of choice, as in much of the Yucatán, and is cooked in a variety of ways.

Since our hotel is only about 150m from the main plaza and we can take in the atmosphere when we walk anywhere we didn't dedicate much time to sightseeing in the town itself. Instead, we wanted to see what nature has to offer around here. For the first day we had chosen the Cañon del Sumidero (or Sumidero Canyon), about an hour's drive from here near the town of Chiapa de Corzo. The easiest way to see it is by booking a tour with a tour operator – of these, also, a great many can be found around the centre – and we did that right after we arrived on Thursday evening, paying 450 Mexican pesos (about $35 Canadian) per person for the transport there, entrance fee to the park where the viewpoints are located at the rim of the canyon, and the guided (Spanish) boat ride in the canyon.

 The van picked us up at our hotel at 9:30 in the morning, this time filled with tourists who pretty much all spoke English, including the Mexicans. This was helpful for us and others who didn't speak much Spanish since Alejandro, the driver, gave his talks in very fast Spanish. It took us much longer to reach the park entrance than expected due to major construction along the highway, and when we finally arrived at the 'Coyote' viewpoint, the second of five, it was nearly noon. The view was spectacular, even more so from the last viewpoint which is 1000m above the Grijalva river. We only had time now to gaze down from these two, not the three in between, which likely wouldn't have afforded too different views anyway. According to Wikipedia “the canyon's creation began around the same time as that of the Grand Canyon, by a crack in the area's crust and subsequent erosion by the Grijalva River.”

It takes a while again to get from the viewpoints all the way down to the boat launch, and by about 2:30 we were on the boat which had room for about 15 passengers. The captain/tour guide didn't speak English either, and I was only able to snatch a few words and sentences here and there; once again our helpful fellow passengers filled us in when necessary. The very first stop was near the Chicoasén Dam. It is the largest hydroelectric power station in Mexico, the dam, an embankment dam, at 261m the tallest in North America. The guide only briefly elaborated on this, however; the main purpose seemed to be to provide passengers with the opportunity to buy a drink at a boat alongside which we stopped. “Micheladas” were the drink of choice, a Mexican drink made with beer, lime juice, spices and chili peppers, a bit reminiscent of a Caesar but without hard liquor.

Now, we entered the mouth of the 13 km long canyon, the walls rising vertically on both sides, the canyon never wider than 1 to 2 km. At the bottom, it is covered in tropical vegetation; above that are sheer cliffs.

 Birds are plentiful, and we stopped to watch vultures, cormorants and egrets up close. I have never seen so many vultures in one place, accept maybe in Kenya near elephant carcasses in the 1970s. Pelicans accompanied us all the way through the canyon, once in a while dive-bombing for a meal, and along the banks herons and egrets stood poised for fishing or were could be spotted in trees like slender candles. 

 Later, we briefly saw a crocodile slide into the murky water, another one a bit further down lying very still on the bank as if it had been put there on display for the tourists. These are American crocodiles, can get up to 70 years old and weigh up to 2000lbs.

We watched some spider monkeys in the trees on the bank, not easy to spot until you learned to look for the branches swaying with their leaps. Turtles and iguanas live here, too; there is a wide variety of flora and fauna in and around the canyon.

Not long after we entered the canyon the guide pointed out a special feature I had read about earlier and recognized immediately: the so-called Árbol de Navidad ('Christmas Tree'), a seasonal waterfall. The 'branches' of the tree are made by mineral deposits which are covered in moss and other plants, some of them blooming. Now that the rainy season has mostly ended there is just a trickle of water. We pulled up right next to it and felt its spray, more like a thin mist. “It is said that this water is like a fountain of youth,' joked the tour guide, 'and it will take ten years off your life.' Even I understood this. :)

Another stop was at the mouth of a small cave, the Cueva de Colores ('Cave of Colours'). Its walls and roof are coloured shades of pink, also from mineral deposits. They form an image of the Virgin of Guadelupe (with a bit of imagination she is visible), and the cave is also a place of pilgrimage on the 12^th of December. The stagnant water in the cave was covered with an incredible amount of garbage, mostly plastic bottles and other plastic items, but also pieces of wood. With every heavy rain this is washed down from the top. It looked awful now, but the guide told us that it is being collected regularly and an effort is being made to keep the canyon clean. Twenty years ago, according to him, the layer of garbage was so thick that you could walk on it. I didn't take a picture ... 

 There are more waterfalls and caves along the canyon, and another one the guide pointed out higher up on the bank features a stalagtite in the shape of a seahorse, thus is aptly called the Caballito de Mar.

After about an hour and forty minutes we arrived at the end point at the city of Chiapa de Corzo. Here, we had about an hour to explore which most of us used to find a place to eat. We met our van at the central plaza with its most prominent feature, the fountain, also called The Stack or The Crown.

Thankfully the drive back went much faster than the way there because the road had re-opened. By the time we reached San Cristobal it was 7:30, and the festivities were in full swing so that Alejandro had to let us out somewhere nearby instead of taking everybody back to their hotel. Even that was a difficult feat since the traffic was so dense in the narrow streets that he had difficulty stopping long enough to let us out without incurring the wrath of the cars stopped behind him.

                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By now it is Sunday evening, and we have another bus ride behind us. We chose the city of Villahermosa as an overnight stop since six hours of bus travel seemed enough for one day. The city, located on the bank of the Grijalva River (the same that forms the canyon), has 340,000 people, the capital area more than 800,000, and since we arrived late in the afternoon, with rain threatening, we only walked to the river and a bit along the beautiful new boardwalk. We'll be happy to move on to a much smaller place on the ocean tomorrow which we will hopefully reach without too much difficulty. We haven't been able to figure out the whole bus ride yet but were able to book a ticket to Champotón, about four hours from here, and from there it is not very far anymore.