Cañon del Sumidero

Nine o’clock start for our first day of adventures. Slightly cloudy with a chance of rain. We boarded our private mini-van and headed out into the mountains. After about an hour drive we arrived at the river and the boat launch. We each got a neon-orange life preserver and boarded the large motorboat with a group of other tourists. The Cañon del Sumidero goes on for hours as we sped along in the boat. Rocky cliffs towered into the clouds along both sides of the canyon. Periodically we would stop to get a close up of an alligator, heron bird or a spider monkey. The lush green foliage was beautiful against the black and gray rocky cliffs. I took lots of pictures of the twists and turns of the canyon walls set against the puffy cloud-blotched blue sky. It was gorgeous. The wind on my face and the beauty of the gorge kept me in a kind of blank-minded trance of awe for most of the trip. When we got back to the dock we returned our life preservers and headed back to the van. We stopped at a little pueblito on the way back and walked around the market and the centro a little bit. Nothing too exciting. Then we boarded the van again and made our way back to San Cristobal. I fell asleep on the way back and slept most of the hour-long journey. It had begun to rain by the time we got back. There was a car accident along the slippery highway home, but luckily we didn’t have any problems. One back in San Cristobal, Ellie, Rochelle and I decided to go find some lunch. We walked back down to the restaurant strip and picked another café. After lunch Rochelle headed back and Ellie and I went to the market again. Ellie still wanted to find some amber earrings for her mom. She found some pretty teardrop ones at a good price after a little bit of bargaining. After the artisan market we decided to go the produce market again to get some fresh fruit. I bought a bag of about 15 mangos for 10 pesos, and Ellie got a bag of little plums for 10 as well. We also got a bunch of about 20 baby bananas for only 8 pesos. We headed back to the hotel and spent the rest of the evening just hanging out and being lazy.