Picture 1: Anyway, here are some pictures from the kayaking expidition. To make a long story short, they wanted to take me on a raft. I wanted a kayak, and we spit the difference with me getting to be in the front of a double kayak. The river is Rio Pescador (I think) and is low in these pictures as this is the Mexican dry season. The rapids are class 2 and 3, but the guides assured me that this is a monster river in Auguest and Septermber when the rainy season increases the river level by 3 meters. Here I am going down a nice rapid getting some water splashed in my face.

Here are a few pictures from the kayaking expidition. This whole idea got launched over a bucket of beers at Hostel Amigo in Mexico City. I had heard that there was some great river rafting in Vera Cruz state and that if enough of us got together and rented a boat we could float the river. Eventually about 5 of us agreed to give it a shot. 3 of us left town the next day for Vera Cruz with plans to meet up. Of course the plan failed. The phone number I got from one of the guys did not work. The two guys who took the bus to Vera Cruz could not remember the name of the hotel I was staying at... so we missed eachother. I decided that Vera Cruz sucked and drove to Xalapa. They decided that Vera Cruz sucked and took a bus back to Puebla. I ran into the guys back in Mexico City today, at the Hostel Amigo. It was like a reunion. Good to see friends again.


This is the best picture I have of the river canyon. This is a really big canyon, with walls at least 200 meters deep in parts. It is at low elevation about 1000 m, and so this sleepy town used to be a farming village growing mangos and sugercane. Apparently about 15 years ago some Canadian kayakers stumbled across this town, and now the river rafting and kayaking industry are quite popular. In the canyon away from town, it is a humid hot jungle type environment. There is alot of wildlife, and I saw a tocan, hawks, different types of fishing birds, and vultures. If Mexico was America they would have made this area a National Park a long time ago.

This river is famous for the large shrip that are caught in it by fisherman. This is a picture of a fisherman with a shrip basket. They attach these baskets to rocks with bait. Shrip climb in and can not get out. I ate a bowl of shrip soup later this night and can say that the shrimp are indeed quite huge. They are the size of small crayfish. The guys that fish for shrimp wear shoes and shorts and little else, and spend most of the day swimming in the river setting their baskets. During the 2 hour kayak expídition, I saw about a half dozen of these guys.

Here is a picture of kayak getting flipped. This is funny as leading up to the kayak getting flipped the guy behind me is yelling alot of instructions at me, and I was replying, OK, OK, OK, without really knowing what he was saying. When he flipped the raft I was actually quite surprised.

Here are the crew of guys (whose names I can not remember). The shorter fellow in the middle took most of the pictures from his hard bottom kayak while the larger fellow on the left was in the inflatable kayak with me. The guy in the middle is supposedly one of the best kayakers in town. If it was not for the new born ecotourism industry in this town these guys would probably be swimming for shrimp in the river, or cutting suger cane with a machete for a living. I was happy to spend $50 for their help guiding me down the river.