View from our tent

Massive tree from the hike the day before

Our sweet Tent space

We were to depart on a bus to Comitan at 1am, to miss the heat we plan to pack up at 5pm and spend the day swimming. There was a couple we were envious of who had rode their mountain bikes in and with some of the long stretches of of grassy pasture that looked awesome. It was about mid day and our pilot friends had already left, with the promise to do a fly by! It is hard not speaking fluent Spanish because most of the people I want to chat with are Mexican with little to no English. The mountain biker couple looked really nice, and I thought I needed to seize the opportunity to see if we had some friends back on the bus to Comitain, and I needed to find out if they had rode all the way out here or if they had put their bikes on a truck like ours. I need to grow and start chatting with people. After unearthing many details about the couple with our broken langues I called Mateo over to help, they soon offered us a ride to San Cristobal in their truck, this is where they were currently living. It was an eight hour drive. Our tent was packed up so fast and were ready to catch a ride back and skip over the treacherous ride at 1 am!! The hike back to the tourist center was exhausting, I felt a million times better than during the hike in. It was much hotter since the time was one in the afternoon, our reward would be a jump in the river at the end of the trail. Right as we were leaving Mateo said, I guess we won’t see the plane fly by. Two seconds later we hear a plane, finding the camera as quickly as we could they fly over us and down the lake, making a big loop, it made me so excited to see they plane double back. I started jumping up and down on the shore as they swooped by us very close to the tree line!

The fly by

My day was made between catching a ride and the airplane fly by! We arrived back into San Cris by 11pm, it was a great ride back full of conversation, the couple Sarah and Axieal both worked for a non government nutrition program. Working with the surrounding communitys in Chiapas, Chiapas is one of the poorest states in Mexico. We stopped in many towns along the way to transport people and for them to say hi!

Cow Cow

Hikers are hot

The awesome truck that took us home on comfy seats

On our way back to San Cris, with a storm following us the whole way it did catch up eventually

We set up camp in an area that was close to the water surrounded by trees. One of the guys came and made sure we wanted to sleep in this area, to us reasons unknown. We didn’t understand him. Our camp site stayed, because there were many families when we arrived and camping spaces were few and we like to be not so close to everyone. As the sun set and and dusk came upon us, the toads came out, they had ear piercing kroakers. The sound would keep me up most of the night! I still had a couple more things to do out side the tent, without a head lamp I ventured out to toss the mango remains, a toad jumped onto my foot, Mateo said it sounded like I was dying. It scared me, bahh silly toad.
I didn’t get much sleep that night, new place, frogs, monkeys, crickets, crazy birds, and heat.

Our tour was at 8 am to avoid the heat of the sun. We went on to the boat with a young man who rowed the whole way, we tried to help but he would not let us. Our plan was to see mayan ruines, we had talked with our guide about it prior to departure. The Laguna was so beautiful, I felt like Tarzan exploring a new frontier, we saw many limestone rocks and then the greatest thing, monkeys swinging from tree to tree, a whole group of five of them.  How awesome, monkeys we found monkeys doing monkey things not in a zoo! Our tour went into a dark cave where we were supposed to see turtles, our guide didn’t tell us to bring any kind of head lamps, and we didn’t see any Mayan ruins. I was thankful for the beautiful scenery, and disappointed with the miscommunication. Our little boat ride was difficult for Mateo and I we are not the sit back and be taken some where type, more of the give us a boat and paddle and point us in the right direction. It was good to be challenged to sit and enjoy.

Much of our time was spent enjoying the hammock, swimming and playing frisbee in the water. People were departing from the camp and we decided to not be tormented by toads the whole night and move into one of the tent spots along the beach that became available. Then the next round of people showed up, less than the day before. Some came by horse back, when we were hiking in we had the option of having our stuff carried for us. My thoughts of that was some little child would carry my bag for me, the thought scared me, if I knew it was a horse it may have changed my mind a bit, maybe… We went and met some of the new arrivals, instantly we were offered food and tequila. Awesome, two of the five people spoke English, the guy was a pilot and had flown everyone out from Comitan. By truck that would of been six hours of horrible roads and by plane thirty minutes. That night there was another a storm, no rain just a lot of wind. We were scheduling ourselfs to depart at 5 pm the next day to catch a late bus to Comitain. And back to San Cristobal.