As we are heading towards the equator, and into the hottest part of the year, the temperature has climbed considerably. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were driving in snow in Texas, but now it’s well above 30°C every day (sometime closer to 40), and our enthusiasm for trudging around cities is waning. Villahermosa is a sizable city and would probably have had enough to entertain us for a while, but the lure of cold, clear waterfalls to cool down in was too strong, and so we didn’t venture further into the city than necessary.
We got up early and drove the remainder of the journey to Agua Azul. Both of our guide books to Mexico indicated that the road between Palenque and San Cristobal de las Casas has been the location of armed hold-ups in the past, and so we were relieved to drive the road with no incidents.
Aga Azul is everything that were hoping it would be. Not even the endless stalls selling tourist tat, and the hawkers inviting you to pay to see their private part of the waterfalls, could detract from its magnificence. It is a long series of cascades through the rainforest, with huge volumes of water thundering over limestone plateaus into innumerate pools. Some of the pools are raging torrents of water, whilst others are shaded, tranquil havens with a small trickle of water in and out to keep the water cool and fresh. Even on a busy Sunday afternoon there were plenty of pools off of the main path where we could bath in with nobody else around. The only time I felt that this wasn’t perhaps the greatest place on earth, was when I saw a group of local men skinning a pig in one of the pools, thankfully downstream of where I was swimming. The huge length of the cascades and the massive volume of water, means that there are a huge variety of waterfalls and pools; we spent a long time in a section of the river near the top of the cascades, where the water is calm and there is a sandy beach on which to relax.
Overnight camping is include in the price of entry to Agua Azul, and so we spent the night in the shady grass parking lot. On Monday morning we all but had the place to ourselves and had a morning swim before getting on the road, back the way we had come towards the next waterfall of Misol Ha. We had driven most of the way to Misol Ha before we were stopped and could drive no further. The Zapatista rebels, which have a small following in this part of Chiapas, had set up a road block in the town of Santa Maria and were letting only locals and collectivos through. The block was simple, a pile of rocks blocking one side of the road and a long plank of wood with hundreds of nails sticking up through it on the other. When a local vehicle arrived, the Zapitistas would collect 20 pesos, give the driver a leaflet outlining their manifesto, and pull the spikey plank out of the way. When we got to the front of the queue of vehicles we were told with no uncertainty that we would not be allowed to pass. Not wishing to argue with the machete wielding, balaclava clad man in charge, nor the hundred or so local men there to add support, we had no choice but to wait or turn around. My Spanish is not good enough to have a lengthy political discussion with an armed revolutionary, but I asked whether we could pass in the morning, and was told that it would be fine.
This is a remote part of Mexico with few roads, and the shortest detour to avoid the roadblock would have been 340 miles of winding roads through the mountainous rainforest; this made it cheaper and quicker to wait for the Zapatistas to pack up and leave. Rather than wait in the shadeless heat at the side of the road, we drove to 30km back to Aagua Azul, and spent another day swimming in the cool water. I guess that the guys collecting money at the entrance to the cascades knew what was happening due to the complete lack of any visitors, and they let us back in without recharging us. The following morning, we got up early and drove up the stretch of road between Agua Azul and Misol Ha for the fourth time. At just after 7am we got to Santa Maria again, but instead of finding a clear road, there was a long queue of stationary trucks backing up almost past the entrance to the town. Clearly the roadblock was still in place, and there were around 30 coaches and trucks on the south side of the blockade waiting to pass. A few of the truck drivers thought that we could be there for another 3 days before they opened up the road again.
With a lot more company than last time, and not wishing to retrace our steps another two times, we decided not to return to Agua Azul and instead joined the line of trucks in Santa Maria and set up camp. As could be predicted, it turned into the hottest day we had seen so far, the thermometer in the truck was reading 37°C for most of the day. There were various strategies for dealing with the heat, one driver slung a hammock under his trailer to get some sleep, one coach driver opened the doors on either side of his belly lockers and lay down in the luggage compartment, another coach driver ran his engine every hour for a few minutes to get the air conditioner working and cool the coach down. We vacated Jim and sat in the shade for several hours, getting progressively more bored.
By the early afternoon, I began to recall a conversation that I’d had with an RV owner in Florida a few months previously. We’d been discussing our RVs and I’d confided that the single cylinder diesel generator that I’d put under the truck had been a mistake due to the excessive noise. I had told him that whilst the generator might turn out to be useful for charging the batteries or running power tools in an emergency there was no way I could use it day to day without making our lives and the lives of people around us a misery. He’d assured me that the time would come where the heat was just too unbearable and I’d be thankful it was there; I dismissed this and forgot about the conversation but the man was right. After a few hours on a filthy embankment by the side of the road in oppressive heat and humidity, we returned to the truck, started the generator, and ran the air conditioner.
The Dometic HB2500 generator in Jim is small by RV standards, but is able to get the truck to a comfortable temperature in anything that a Northern European summer can provide. In the south of Mexico it was woefully inadequate. It probably only managed to get the temperature in Jim down to about 30°C, but even for that I was grateful, and with the reduction in humidity it was significantly more comfortable inside the truck than out. The generator was loud enough to force the truck behind us to leave and find somewhere else to park, but for me the generator had never seemed so quiet.
Throughout the day a loudspeaker had called the villagers and Zapatista supporters to a meeting point by the blockade, to discuss something important. Not speaking Spanish I had no idea what they were talking about, but after a meeting at about 4pm, I got a vague inkling of what they’d agreed. After they had all voted on an important issue, several of the truck drivers who had been watching the meeting looked excited, returned to their vehicles and started their engines. Soon enough the line of vehicles started moving; there was a significant degree of incompetence in trafficking the large queue of heavy vehicles through the town, but after several artics had been forced to reverse back up the road, we finally started heading toward the blockade. Like all the trucks, we had to pay 200 Pesos to pass, and with the robbery completed, we were finally on pour way. I’m grateful that we were not stuck in Santa Maria longer and I’m grateful that the cost was less than £10, but I can’t see why they couldn’t have given us the option of paying the money two days earlier, and I resent being involved in an extortion racket that they disguise as a political revolt.
By the time we had cleared the road block it was late and neither Naomi or I wanted to hang around for another day so close to the action. We drove past Misol Ha and drove straight to the Mayabell Campsite near the Mayan ruins at Palenque.
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