Trip report - Winter 2006-2007 - Road Trip to Mexico - November 20 to December 3, 2006

Helene Scalliet

Tom McEwan wasn't kidding when he decided to name his kayaking school/travel outfitter business "Liquid Adventures". This pioneer of whitewater organizes several weeklong trips to Mexico in the winter, from beginner to advanced. This year, the first trip was an advanced trip, and he needed to drive the van down from Washington DC so I offered to help instead of flying into Mexico City for the scheduled weeklong trip. The van will winter in Mexico and be driven back by Tom and some poor unsuspecting soul next spring, so I flew back with the rest of the group at the end of the trip.

We left Washington DC at 2pm on Monday, November 20th - and crossed the Mexican border at 2am on Wednesday, November 22nd. We didn't stop on the way except for food, and even that was only TWICE because Tom forgets to eat and I was too intimidated to tell him I was hungry. I learned quickly that if I needed a basic need met (food/rest/shelter) I really had to speak up because Tom's needs are abysmally smaller than anyone else's, so he doesn't think about these things. So we just alternated between driving and resting. I wasn't able to catch some Z's in the moving van, so after 36 hours I was a mess and really needed to rest. Two hours after we crossed the border (and we had to find another border crossing than the one we planned because the first one wouldn't let us in with 13 kayaks strapped on the roof), we pulled over near some shacks and crawled in the back of the van for three blessedly non-moving hours of sleep. This was by far the longest I'd ever driven without stopping, and while it was physically demanding and I was beyond exhausted, it was incredible to traverse so much ground and see the climate, topography, and architecture change gradually as the miles went by. This is the kind of progression that you miss completely when you fly somewhere, so I am very thankful that I was able to be part of the McEwan adventure!

Once we got to northern Mexico, we had a bit of free time so Tom led me down a river (Rio El Salto) and a creek (Rio Frio??) full of waterfalls and turquoise waters, which was a total blast. I got to run the highest waterfall I've ever run (24 foot, 8 meters) and I had a super clean run so that alone was worth the trip! Tom led me expertly through all the drops, turning back with that boyish smile on his face and that "isn't this FUN???" look that he gets when he's on the water - darn, I hope I'm still that much of a kid when I'm 60 too! In this little town of El Naranjo we were driving out of town after running the El Salto, and I saw a pick up with kayaks in the back at the Pemex (gas station) so I yelled ¨kayaks!!!!¨and we stopped to chat with the group. Three guys and one girl from the Southeast of the US. One guy asked me if Tom was my husband and I was just like ¨uhhh, no that´s just Tom¨. Then another guy said ¨there used to be this guy McEwan who used to run trips down here¨and he was blown away when he realized he was in fact talking to THE McEwan. And I mean THE McEwan, the legend. I felt proud.

Since there was more water than normal in the El Salto, Tom thought there might be good water in this tiny creek he´s run before with tons of ledges. So we embarked on a wild goose chase trying to find this Rio Frio for a quick run before heading down the next 10-hour drive to Tlapacoyan where we had to be on Friday, possibly hitting another waterfall section of El Salto in the afternoon. In any case that was the plan when we started off. We drove in muddy tiny dirt roads in between rows of sugar cane fields for HOURS trying to find this ¨Pequeno Rio¨ - people were helpful but we didn´t quite know how to describe where we wanted to go because Tom didn´t remember, and besides we only understood about a quarter of what they said. They sent us to this little hamlet called Ojo Frio (we thought that might be the name of the river so we told people that´s what we wanted) but there was no river there or at least not one with whitewater. We drove back to this main town of Damian three times until we finally got pointed in the right direction after Tom remembered the putin was in a place called Aguacate. I think the locals will remember the locos gringos who kept on driving by asking for more directions!!! We´re talking little hamlet with two dirt streets and people living in mud huts with their cattle and stuff. At some point we saw this tiny little drainage ditch-looking thing called the San Nicolas, flat water and all, that abruptly soared into a GIANT sinkhole, I mean giant like mini-Grand Canyon giant, with a 300 foot waterfall into a walled-in canyon at the bottom. The craziest thing I´ve ever seen. it was so unexpected and wild - made me think twice about running ANYTHING blind around here!!!! Anyway, after leaving at 9am thinking we´d be done paddling this Rio Frio river by noon, we actually finally put in at 4pm. Tom drove the van to the take out and ran back while I carried the gear from the road to the actual take out on the other side of the sugar cane field. I watched for snakes every step I took.

The Rio Frio (that´s what we call it but I seriously think that´s not its name) was tiny and ledge after ledge after ledge. Mainly just 2 to 4 footers but super continuous and fun, with one larger drop that we scouted and then ran. I try to scout stuff when i see mist coming off it, and Tom said he had this funny thing about not wanting to run stuff blind. I don´t think that´s weird, and it probably explains why he´s still around after 60 years of running hard stuff! Anyway this river was maybe 20 feet across at the most, sometimes we had to crawl under tickets of sugar cane which would be ugly places to get stuck in a strainer. It was so pretty with the turquoise waters and the overgrown canyon - the whole river was covered with tree canopy the whole way, so it was like paddling in a cave. It took me about 5 minutes to get rid of that claustrophobic feeling but then I had loads of fun. I love creeking! And I´m so in love with that small Solo, I hate to admit it! We got done once again right at sunset. Then had a great dinner of random food that I couldn´t tell you what it was in Damian, the locals were telling us of these terrible snakes and crocodiles they have in the rivers here but we think they were just trying to scare us. At least that´s what I´m banking on. I´ll lay the smack down on those crocos if they come near my awesome new paddle!

Then we got back in the car and drove from 8pm till 6am the next day non-stop again. I had the graveyard shift from 1am to 5am on psycho winding mexican roads where you have to aggressively pass slow trucks on often blind turns. You wouldn´t believe how crowded the roads are at 2 in the morning! Once again took some getting used to, at first I was too scared to pass the trucks but if I had to drive the whole way at 30 miles an hour we´d still be there, so I had to get over my hesitation and just put the pedal to the metal. Oh, and let me tell you about the TOPEZ. Evil little speed bumps that crop up out of nowhere and threaten to send the van flying off the road. Freaking Topez - they also make it impossible for the non-driver who should be resting to get any sleep. They like to place them around a bend so you really don´t see them till it´s too late. I think I will make a bumper sticket that says I hate Topez. All the mexicans in the DC area will have a great laugh!

After 10 hours we arrived at 6AM in Tlapacoyan - a small town in the state of Veracruz with a small adventure resort (Aventurec) whose owners Tonio and Sofia are friends of Tom's. This is his home away from home while he's in Mexico in the winter. I had recovered from the graveyard shift driving there, which was quite a rude introduction to Mexican driving. I had almost as much adrenaline pumping through me from passing trucks on windy roads than I get from running whitewater! We spent a day there getting the van fixed and gathering/organizing food for the weeklong trip, and picked up the crew the next day in Mexico City. The crew consisted of Christian Berger (the fearless co-leader), Tedley Bradley, Grayson Taff, Emily Cohn, Mike Johnson and Patrick Gannon.
From Mexico City we took the bus to the town of Puebla where we spent the night in a real hotel (the only hotel we saw the whole trip), then drove the van all day to a no-name town in northern Oaxaca to put in on the Rio Santo Domingo. The Rio Santo Domingo starts with a few miles of flat water, then drops into a canyon with about 20 miles of rapids, then ends with another 3-4 miles of flat water. It was going to be a two-and-a-half days, two nights on the river type of trip. We slept by the river on Sunday night and packed all our gear in our kayaks in the morning. It was the first self-contained trip for most of us and it took us awhile to figure out how to fit all our gear in those boats - sadly, I had to leave my book behind (a hardback), and I knew three days without a book was going to be hard for me. Aaaah, the sacrifices that we make just to spend the night under the stars away from civilization. At last, around 9:30AM, we were off!

Tom had assured us that this river was very scenic, and comparable to a Class III river we are all very familiar with in Pennsylvania (the Lower Yough). He was absolutely right about the scenic part. The trip started in an Arizona-like landscape, complete with cactus-covered hills and scorpion tracks in the dirt; and it ended in a lush forest with mossy trees covered with lianas and bromeliads and ferns, with huge iguanas lazily watching us go by from nearby branches. Incredible! However, it soon became apparent that there was more water in that river than he had expected, and once we got into the meaty section of the river, we were boat-deep in true Class IV waters! I have run Class IV water before and I am becoming more comfortable on it, but this river was at the top of my abilities at this point. I wasn't ready for the kind of sustained mental effort it takes to run Class IV water for hours on end, day after day, with an unfamiliar kayak loaded with several days' worth of food and equipment! Being the least experienced paddler of the group, I was extremely challenged by these four days of paddling difficult water, which was already difficult for everyone else. The sustained tension of constant fear left me hanging to my composure by a mere thread, which broke a couple of times after a trashing by the mighty river gods - sending me sobbing and hysterical in an eddy, looking for a way out. Thankfully my companions were understanding and just gave me a few minutes to regroup whenever I broke down, knowing that there was no choice for me but to recover and keep paddling, and keep paddling WELL in fact, which was not optional. I really feel that I surmounted an incredible amount of fear on this trip, and I'd like to hope it makes me a better person in the end. It'd better - otherwise the shame of crying in front of the whole group would have been in vain!

The descent of the Santo Domingo took us four days instead of two and a half since the difficulty forced us to advance cautiously and scout many rapids, so we weren't able to paddle the Rio de Oro, which was supposedly a little gem going from a volcano to the Gulf of Mexico with waterfalls and all that good stuff. The night after we took out, we stayed at a gulf-side beach (Las Tuslas) violently whipped by hurricane-like winds. I hadn't quite recovered from my heat exhaustion episode (which happened at the take out of the Santo Domingo, and had me on my back barely conscious for the rest of the day) so I had a bit of fever, but with some Tylenol I was able to get better and rest. The next day (Friday, but who cares?) we spent many hours in the van getting back to Tlapacoyan, where we had the chance to run the Rio Filobobos on the last day. We ran the easy section, which supposedly contained one Class IV rapid - but after the gruesome Santo Domingo we were underwhelmed and felt that we were just floating down boogie water the whole way. It was nice to enjoy paddling without being scared, however, for once during this trip!

Was this one of the toughest trips I've ever done? Definitely. Would I go back? Heck yeah, I'm going back!!!!