#cascadasmagicas huatulco santamariahuatulco oaxaca mexico cascadas waterfalls roadtrip traveler travelers

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

Hiatus and the Cascadas Magicas

I am really behind on this blog.  Like, really really behind.  Like over a year behind.  But I haven’t felt motivated to post super frequent updates because I have actually been in the same place for awhile (Guatemala) and while I have been going on adventures in Guatemala, I’ve also spent time just....being.  I’ve split my time between Lake Atitlan, Antigua, and San Diego for the last year, returning to California twice for work, and it has been lovely.  The time I spent in Lake Atitlan and Antigua were periods of deep introspection, instead of moving from place to place on the outside, I moved from place to place within.  I had the time and the space to focus on myself, to try new things, to work on myself, to learn and to heal.  After a year, half spent in California and half in Guatemala, I’ve grown a lot.  My Spanish is vastly improved by the month of private lessons I took in Antigua.  My soul is greatly improved by searching out new ventures at Lake Atitlan, and overall, my time spent here has had a wonderful effect on my overall.  However, I am feeling the pull of the road again, which means I have to do a write up of both my last days in Mexico and my time in Guatemala before I’m off to new countries and new adventures.  So let me catch you up on the end of 2016 and how I ended up where I am today.

Last we left our intrepid adventurers (Elene, Chris, Matteo and I) we were on our way from the only naked beach in Mexico, Zipolite, Huatulco.  Zipolite was small, the surf was brutal, but I could not pass the chance to be naked on a beach, and neither could Elena.  The boys kept their shorts on, but she and I frolicked in the waves, naked as jaybirds as the old saying goes.  Honestly, I prefer to swim naked if given the chance, it reduces the possibility of sand getting trapped in....places, so I relished this rare opportunity before we moved onto the city. Huatulco is a big, tourist-y city, so not my favorite kind of place, but we figured we’d stay a few days and see what there was to offer.  We went to many of the beaches, but I found them not nearly as interesting as the reefs of Mazunte or the rock formations on the shores of Puerto Escondido.  The real beauty of Hualtulco was in it’s nature preserves and it’s waterfalls.  On the way to Huatulco, and on the road to many of the beaches, were nature preserves that were home to magnificent tropical birds of a variety of species.  They would fly overhead, some with long tail feathers fluttering behind them, perching in trees and yelling to each other in tongues we could not hope to understand.  Every day I saw bird species I had never seen or heard from before, and I found myself reaching for my phone to figure out what to call these strange creatures before me.

When we weren’t chasing beaches and birds, we went chasing waterfalls.  About an hour and a half outside Huatulco were the Cascadas Magicas (magical waterfalls for those who are not studying Spanish).  I read conflicting reports about getting there, the roads were bad, the roads were good, take a guide, don’t take a guide, but my trusty hatchback had made it over everything so far, so it was decided that we would take my car and I would drive us to these waterfalls. The four of us piled in around noon and set off to find the waterfalls.  The driving instructions we had found were pretty clear, until they weren’t.  Getting the majority of the way there was fine, and we went from paved road to dirt, then passed through what appeared to be the entrance of some sort of park, and dirt gave way to dirt road covered in small rocks and steep hills.  I even had to take my little Diablito that hung off my rearview mirror down because she was swinging so wildly I worried that she might break when she hit the windshield.  Still, after much up and down, over and around, we came to a clearing and a place to park the car.  After that, we started down a beautiful trail that ran next to a stream.

The four of us headed down the trail, stepping around the thick roots of the tall trees that formed the canopy overhead.  Everywhere there were butterflies, brightly colored, a myriad of sizes, flitting about and landing on the damp trail.  The stream next to us began to widen and as it did it took on an unearthly hue that I would eventually discover was common in bodies of water in this part of the world.  I marveled at the color, nothing back in California looked quite like it, and stopped for a few photos before we headed further upstream.

Further upstream the creek widened, and then we began to see the falls.  They rose in a series, plateuing above each other, flowing into pools, all the same opalescent turquoise color.  We also noticed we weren’t the only one’s there as a Mexican family was frolicking in the pools and taking photos as well.  Near these pools there was a little structure with benches and shelves where we could place our belongings.  After stripping down and setting our stuff down, we hit the pleasantly cool water.

The various falls and pools offered a lot to explore, there was a section of cave that the water flowed through that you could climb through with the aide of ropes to keep you from falling.  There were various falls, rocks to jump off of, pools to swim in.  There was even a rope swing suspended from a tree that we took turns jumping off of.  It felt like a naturally made water park, and the fun and welcome break from the heat was well worth the rocky drive there.

Once we were done mucking about in the pools we went to collect our belongings and head on.  The waterfalls we had played in weren’t the only ones in the park, and we were enticed away by the promise of a 100ft waterfall down another rocky road.  As we were dressing we struck up casual conversation with the family that was there, they had a guide and, I guess as part of the way he was entertaining the family, gestured to my tattoos.  The next thing I knew the family was standing around me while the woman who I took to be the matriarch, commented on my back piece (for those who don’t know, my entire back is covered with a black and grey steampunk wing design).  Some of the family members seemed like they didn’t know what to do, but the grandmother complemented the design over and over again, “Que padrissimo,” she exclaimed, (”que padre” is Mexico specific slang meaning “that’s cool,” basically the woman was saying that she thought my back piece was “very cool.”).  It was an awkward moment for me because my Spanish was very limited at that time, and so I wasn’t quite sure what the family members were saying as they stood around me, but once I heard that, and realized I had the matriarch’s approval, I didn’t care about the rest of them so much.

I want to take this moment to note that as far as tattoos go, I was not the only one in our group that had them.  In fact, I would argue that Chris probably has the same amount of ink as I do if we’re talking about just the amount of skin covered.  But one thing I have learned while travelling through Mexico is that tattooed women are not as common in that country as I might have assumed.  Many of the women who I have befriended on my travels through Mexico have said the same thing, that they would love to get tattoos, but their parents would disown them.  When I began to understand the strong cultural disapproval of tattoos on women, I began to understand why I stuck out wherever I went.  While I look like I am from Mexico, and indeed people would approach me speaking rapid-fire Spanish as if I had been born there, I was also marked in a way that most Mexican woman weren’t.  These moments, of Mexican people coming up to me to talk to me about my tattoos, happened again and again over my time in the country.  And while people were generally very respectful (it was rare that anyone tried to touch my tattoos), and usually gave me compliments I only half-understood, I still never really got used to that “under the microscope” feeling.

Still, the family was lovely, and I thanked them for their kind words, before we got on our way.  Back at the car we agreed to give a man who worked in the park a ride back down to the main road and, in turn, he said he would lead us to the largest of the cascadas magicas.  The road to the largest waterfall was no less rocky or steep, but I could feel my little engine that could struggling a bit more under the weight of one more passenger.  As the boys yammered to each other in the back seat in Spanish, I focused on getting us over he next hill without one of us having to walk.  The faithful hatchback did it’s duty, and after parking on the side of the road and a ten minute walk, I found myself staring at the grandest waterfall we had laid eyes on that day, well worth the detour.

The fall was beautiful, but this was clearly not a place to swim under threat of painful death, so after a few minutes admiring the scenery we were climbing up the many stairs to the road again.  After this it was a lot of uphill and downhill, retracing our steps until we brought our passenger to the town near the main road.  We took a moment, after seeing him off, to check out the local vendors selling delicious Oaxacan chocolate and mezcal.  There was a table set up with more types and flavors of mezcal than I had ever seen and the vendor eagerly offered us tastes of the bottles he had already opened.  I tried a few, curiously, but, unfortunately, the one I was most interested in was not open.  There was mezcal, double distilled mezcal, mezcal with a scorpion in the bottle, vanilla cream mezcal, coffee mezcal, maracuya (a type of fruit) mezcal, but the one I was curious about (but not willing to buy if I could not have a taste) was a bottle full of emerald green mezcal in which pieces of an unidentifiable herb, garlic, and scorpions sat.  To this day I regret it because, even if it had tasted terrible, how often in your life are you going to get to say “I drank garlic, herb, scorpion mezcal”?  

I ended up picking up a bottle of double distilled mezcal to take back to the states.  My companions selected a few delicious chocolate-y treats and then we were on the road back to Huatulco.  On the way back we came around a bend in the road and saw a beautiful scene of sun cutting through clouds above the jungle floor.  I paused so we could take it in. Even after a day of incredible sights it seemed that Oaxaca was not done showing us its charms.  Tired and cheery we made the rest of the way back to the hostel munching on chocolate and contemplating our next map point.