Trip Report

Mexpeleo
Our First Trip to Southern Mexico

Christmas and New Years 2002 - 2003

by Denise Prendergast

Crew: Denise Prendergast, Aaron Miller, Dale Barnard

Dale and I have just returned from a vacation in Mexico, and I thought I’d share some of our adventures. We started out on the Sunday before Christmas, picking up our friend Aaron Miller from the Austin airport. He’d flown in from Boulder, CO to ride with us to a caving convention called Mexpeleo which would be held for four days in southern Mexico (about 2 hours north of Acapulco).

We took about 4 days to get to the convention, having lots of fun along the way. We spent an afternoon in San Miguel de Allende, a charming town in the mountains, full of tourists and shops selling nice Mexican crafts. It was funny that we found a Mexican KOA to camp at (it was actually called KDA). I was happy because I scored a bolsa (a sturdy plastic shopping bag) on which was painted an image of Frida Kahlo. She was a wild Mexican painter in the early 1900s, and is my new hero after seeing a recent movie about her.

On Christmas day, we visited a national park near Toluca (just west of Mexico City) with a huge volcano. We thought it would be deserted on this holiday, but instead there were crowds of people, and major traffic jams on the way out. We drove to about 14,000 ft and then tried to hike to the top of the volcano (about 15,000 ft), but fell short after not finding a reasonable trail. I stopped the hike before the guys did, really feeling the altitude (headache), but I was excited to be at the highest elevation I’d ever attained, about 14,500 ft (higher than any point in the continental US). It was windy and cold, bitter weather, but we had beautiful views. After the hike, we rewarded ourselves with tacos, and some locals gave us tequila shots! I think we were the only gringos there, so we stood out in the crowd (especially red-headed Dale and blue-eyed Aaron). I kinda blend in until I open my mouth (bad Spanish).

We visited a commercial cave at Cacahuamilpa. It is known as the Carlsbad Caverns of Mexico, and I can see why, absolutely huge rooms and formations. Unfortunately, the tour guide went on way too long about different formations looking like kissing couples and the Virgin Mary. I almost went crazy.

We briefly visited Taxco, a really cool town, and shopped until we dropped. The town is the silver center of Mexico, and prices were unbelievably cheap. I was excited to score cheap strands of beads, the first I’ve ever seen for sale in Mexico. We had a scary ride trying to climb incredibly steep hills to the plaza in Dale’s somewhat-wimpy truck. We would get a run for a hill and then right at the top, traffic sometimes backed up, almost causing us to come to a complete stop. If we had lost our momentum, we would have been stuck on the hill with a line of VW-Bug taxis behind us. Next time, we’ll park somewhere easy and walk!

The caving convention was really fun. It was held at a beautiful location, pretty fancy camping with a swimming pool, showers and beautiful mountain scenery -- sweet. Unfortunately, I came down with a bad cold the first night there and stayed sick until the end of my vacation. Oh well, it was a nice place to recuperate, sipping juice from a fresh coconut by the pool. I did make one excursion before I started feeling too bad. We went to a commercial cave a two-hour drive away. It’s called Juxtalahuaca and contains 3,000-year-old paintings by the Olmecs (pre-Aztec). It was a beautiful cave, with bats and lovely formations, and some of the hugest, weirdest cockroaches I’ve ever seen. We also saw calcified human remains, including a creepy skull! It was a very hot cave, and after a few hours of the tour, we were rewarded with wading through a nice, clean lake. Since we were there as a part of the caving convention, we got to go past the usual tourist parts to see some intricate aragonite formations lining the walls. I stopped short of the final destination since there was a scary free climb, and I felt inadequately equipped in a bathing suit and no knee/elbow pads or gloves. At the top of the climb, the others continued a short distance to see aragonite trees in the shape of Christmas trees. They were beautifully intricate trees up to a meter tall with white rock crystals the size of threads poking out in every direction.

The convention had about 90 attendees, mainly from the US and Mexico. We saw slide shows every evening and had a nice party at the end, complete with a piñata and local brass band (kind of an incoherent polka sound to the music). Everyone raved about the caves in the area, the most popular being the strenuous 3-km Resumidero de Acahuizotla. Dale described it as a surface river that submerges into a fantastic water cave, requiring a wetsuit and vertical gear to enter. Once underground, there were about 10 drops on rope into pools of rushing water. At one point, it required swimming through hundreds of plastic bottles and other floating garbage before climbing a rope to a mud belly crawl for 50 feet. On the other side, there was an opportunity to wash up in cleaner water. Most of the talk of the cave was about the sump (a water passage with no air space above you). This sump had been rigged with a rope to pull yourself through it for about 8 feet before popping back up into an 8-inch airspace. Quite scary, with little margin for error. It took about 6 hours if you went with lots of folks (or as few as two hours for a speedy crew). I’m kinda glad I missed it!

We headed south to Acapulco to spend New Years on the beach. About 20 of us camped a few miles north of Acapulco on a beautiful beach at an RV campground. We lucked out and scored camping spots together right on the white sandy beach. We had heard that Acapulco has a million people, is expensive, and is a zoo, so we were happy to enjoy our poor-man’s “grubby paradise.” This refers to the so-so toilets and showers, plus the mini-garbage dump hidden by the sinking building next to us.

I still wasn’t feeling too hot, keeping Dale up coughing all night, but again, I’d rather recuperate on the beach than at home! On New Years’ Eve, I went to bed early, but got Dale to get me up at midnight to enjoy the fireworks our friends had brought. Happy 2003! The next day, most people (not me) went to town to see the famous cliff divers and do some shopping. I unexpectedly ended up going to the town center that evening, looking for a friend who’d gotten separated from the group seven hours earlier. We feared he was missing, but of course, he ends up back at camp while we’re looking for him in the city. It turns out that he had spent hours riding buses and taxis in circles, trying to find his way back to the campground. At least I got to see the city in the cool of the evening. It was a zoo, and I was glad we were staying well to the north of it.

I ventured into the Pacific a couple times, but the big waves and undertow scared me and beat me up a bit. The water was heavenly, not too cold or warm. Mostly I just lounged in a hammock under a wooden shelter, reading a Buddy Holly biography and saying “no gracias” to all the vendors coming by to sell their wares. Ate some pretty good seafood at the campground, yum.

It was sad to say goodbye to our friends and end our vacation, but it was time to head back. We did get to see a couple sights along the way. We drove through Mexico City (and unbelievably did not get lost!), and did a hurried tour of the ruins at Teotihuacan. Nice pyramids and museum. We also checked out a commercial cave named Tolantongo, a very unique cave with gushing warm water that was not sulfuric. Inside the cave, steam filled the rooms, making it difficult to see anything. Our small headlights disappeared into the steam, leaving us to feel our way around as best we could. Water poured from the rocks in the middle of giant stalactites, forming waterfalls and cascades in every corner of the large rooms. One passage had warmer water than the others, perhaps about 102 degrees F, and felt like a sauna. Good for my sinuses!

So after two weeks and 3000 miles, we returned to Base Camp, tired, broke, and happy. Lucky Dale caught my cold, and Aaron has returned to the Rockies. I was thinking how going to Mexico is like caving: both push you to the limits mentally and physically, and are surprising, exhilarating, scary, dirty, beautiful. When you’re finished, you’re somewhat relieved to be done and out of that foreign environment, but glad you took the trip, feeling so alive with new experiences.

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