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.

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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.