DC Days: Chapter Four: Chiapas, The Great Lake State

Lagunas de Montebello is an area of 5o small lakes in the pine-forested border between Guatemala and Mexico. Because Sasha is always at least a tiny bit homesick for Michigan summers, she ranked this as among her favored destinations in Chiapas. There is a Mexican National Park here, and it was uncrowded and as promised, full of lakes. With great anticipation, we drove from our hacienda the 10 miles or so to the park entrance and made a day out of lake-hopping. The first stop was a trail that led to underwater caves and river.

There were lots of men eager to take us on horses down to the Grutas, the riverside caves we were after, but Sasha was a little hesitant to hop on board a horse on such steep terrain. So instead, we scrambled on foot through some woods and wandered past a few houses (apparently when the area became a national park, the folks who were already living here were allowed to stay.) and up the ubiquitous stairs and hillsides before stumbling onto a rushing river.

We checked out the caves and determined that absolutely jaguars lived in there. No question.

Obviously an enormous scratching post.

Rivers are great and all (they sound awesome), but we were ready for some lakes so we trotted back to another area of the park to visit some of these famous lagoons. The first one we spotted was called Laguna Ensueno and indeed it did look pretty dreamy. The color was such an intense turquoise.

We kept moving after lots of "Wow that really is blue!" comments which would become a theme of the day.

We toured around some of the other Lagunas de Colores (5 blue lakes), and then headed to one of the largest lakes in the park, La Canada.

They call that rock "King Kong."

We noticed that there were signs about renting "balsas" near the lakeshore and after investigating, figured out that we could paddle around the lake on a rented raft made of cork trees. With a guide and a fee, of course!

Seaworthy? Really?

So we hopped on board with Hector, a local man who pointed out the sights and told Sasha that in fact the nearest toucan birds were about 5 hours away. Sigh. But he showed us a spot of rock that looked "just like" the Virgen de Guadalupe and told us the names of flowers and a little bit about the history of the area so it certainly wasn't all bad news. According to Hector, the color of the lakes is due to their great depth and possibly something to do with volcanoes.

"Volcanoes" is the catch-all to explain everything.

We paddled around to the "secret side" of the lake and docked the raft for a short climb to yet another stunning vista. Hector pointed out that a few Guatemalan families lived closeby, relying on the lake for their drinking water, and showed us a bunch of washing boards and stands used for doing laundry in the lake. In the shallows of the lake you could really see how pristine the water was. And kind of cold too. Not Michigan lakes cold, but surprisingly crisp!

Hector took a photo of us in front of the hidden lake behind Canada.

And then we were headed back to the dock again...

to find something to eat in Tziscao, the only town of any size in the park. We had a confusing time of it Tziscao, it is tiny and not really the town we had in mind. But we found an open kitchen at a lakefront motel and settled down to eat. Sergio sampled some local cuisine:

And Sasha got really excited about pointing out Guatemala which she understood to be right across Lake Tziscao. Only she was pointing in the wrong direction...

Not the only time Sasha's navigational skills proved faulty on this trip.

After fueling up, we headed to Laguna de Montebello for a swim. We drove right up to the beach and realized that the clouds were coming in and that in fact it wasn't particularly hot anymore. Oh well. Sergio tried to give the rental car some added sex appeal while warming himself on the hood.