In San Cristobal, however, I was quickly comforted as I was met by the beautiful chica, Adriana, one of my closest friends from my first term of university who I haven't seen since she returned home from her exchange last January. In true Em style, I was rather animated about the ordeal and was so, so excited to catch up on all the gossip of the past year and a half. I've said it before, but finding little pieces of home away from home all over the world really is one of the joys of traveling. For me, home isn't necessarily a fixed place, but instead it's a feeling you find inside any person you love and feel comfortable with. It's those little perks that make these adventures so addictive.
Adriana took this just after I arrived.
I stayed just one night at Adriana's house before we set off for the jungle the next day. Adriana and Manu (her boyfriend) had picked a place for us to camp in the heart of the jungle called Las Nubes, which required around four and a half hours in various modes of transport to get there. In the morning Adriana and I had been teaching an English class in a rural community about a hour and a half drive form the city, which meant we were in a bit of a rush, and by the time we'd finished a quick lunch of roast chicken (priorities!) we were already setting off pretty late. It turns out this would then cause the start of our adventure to begin long before we arrived at our destination campsite.
We were about 10km when we arrived in a rural community near Las Nubes in the dark, with little money and no means to get to our destination due to the only connecting bridge being under construction. We had been kicked off the bus by the driver who told us that 'el puente' (the bridge), wasn't far away. LIES. We ended up having to negotiate with a family of locals, who tried to extort us for all we were worth for a lift either to Las Nubes or the bridge. We even debated staying in a room that they offered to rent us for the night, but in the end, due to a combination of mistrust and Manu's expertise on all things nature related, we decided to risk getting a lift to the bridge, camp out there for the night and carry on the next day. So we jumped in the back of the 'helpful' family's pick up truck (for the fee of 100 pesos) and were off.
Although by this point I was exhausted, rather scared and pissed at the situation, there is still very little that compares to the feeling of riding in the back of a pick-up truck after a long day, the warm rainforest air suddenly de-sticking your sweaty clothes from your back and making you feel alive again. Just don't open your mouth... I learned that the hard way.
We spent the night by the river, the extremes of the intense humidity and pounding rain each preventing the other from driving me completely insane. I've come to find that Mexico is a very extreme kind of place in many aspects, be it the weather or the people. It's taking a little getting used to.
Everything seems so much less sinister in the light. Turns out our camping spot was pretty beautiful once the sun rose.
The next morning we got ready pretty sharpish as the night watchman of the bridge has offered to give us a ride to Las Nubes when his shift finished in the early hours. So another pick-up truck ride and a short walk later, we arrived, tired and drenched in sweat, but (for me, at least) utterly relieved. It's not that I didn't enjoy our first night camping, it was just nice to finally feel safe again and I think the feelings of uncertainty are always perpetuated in an unfamiliar setting (such as being in another continent, on the other side of the world, in the jungle...)
Staying in Las Nubes was a really relaxing time. We swam and slept and explored and I had a lot of time for writing which is always lovely. We ate fresh mangos from the trees (Adriana told me that mangos here are like a religion; I'm totally converted) and bought beans from a little old lady down the road who thought we were nuts for coming out here with so little money and food, and at night time I lay in a sea of fireflies staring at the clearst sky I've seen in a very long time. I think it's all too easy to forget how breath-taking the stars can be.
There wasn't much space for swimming because the current was so strong and the rapids were crazy, so we made the most of a little area by the campsite which was sheltered by trees. It was pretty incredible to have the place to ourselves.
I can't tell you how happy I am that we had Manu as a guide through the woods, because there is no way we would have been able to find our way in and out alone!
Yes mum, I actually cooked! The guys at the campsite were really confused when we turned down food because we has our own and asked if we were vegetarians... We obviously looked like the crazy hippy traveler types.
Las Nubes is famous for it's waterfalls, and there is no debate as to why. Walking through the forest alongside the river, you can see exactly just how dramatic these falls are, with huge rapids and twenty foot drops appearing almost from no where, weaving in and out of a valley carved through the dense greenary. There's a walk of just less than a kilometer that you can take up to a mirador (look-out point), from which you can see just how vast these rapid and waterfalls become once they escape the forest.
View from our campsite.
From on top of the mirador. As always things never look quite as good in pictures, but man it was stunning.
Our third adventure of our three day trip began when the time finally came to go home. Unfortunately we'd severely underestimated the amount of money we'd need to get back and I'd some how managed to lose 100 pesos, meaning that we had to walk much of the 6km walk back to the bridge. On an average day 6km would be nothing to me, but with all the camping gear, lack of food/water and the serious heat, it was proving a bit more of a challenge. Luckily, a family on their way to the next town picked us up and took us most of the way, and in that moment I've never wanted to hug someone so much. So after trundling along in a car with seven people, but built for five, that had almost no windows or seatbelts (pretty much no-one uses seat belts here) and a short walk and another combi ride, we reached the bridge, to catch another combi to Comitan (about three hours away), where we caught our final hour long combi ride back to San Cris. Journey's like this are really common out here and I actually quite enjoy the fact that no-one really seems to be in a rush to get anywhere. It's qutie refreshing to take the pace down a few pegs from London.
So we made it home, safe and sound. I showered, we ate some delicious quesadillas at a really cool place down the road and then slept for about a bazillion hours. And aside from the GIANORMOUS bug bites I'd received, we'd done it all pretty much unscathed too.
I'm not sure how well you can make that out, but that bite was basically the size of my entire thigh (bigger than my hand). We spectulated a lot, possibly a spider or a really nasty ant, but basically, I'm just very allergic to tropical bugs.
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