We drove for more than five days before we made it to Salina Cruz, home of the Rio Zimatam and Rio Copalita. The drive isn’t all that far it’s just driving in Mexico is slow for two reasons. One: their solution to speeding is to put random speed bumps (Topes) everywhere and Two: the roads go through the mountains where your constantly stuck behind a truck or slamming on the brakes because there’s a heard of cows in the middle of the road or half the road has eroded leaving a precipice in front of you. But despite all that we made it there safe and sound although a little bit antsy to hit the river.

First up was the Rio Zimatam, a super fun creek run through a spectacular granite gorge. Unfortunately the old Escort isn’t exactly a heavy duty vehicle so we opted to only bring our play boats to save on weight and since most of the rivers we’d be doing were play runs we figured it‘d be fine. It turned out to be a great idea since we bottom out on every Tope we hit as it is and probably would of broke the car in half by now with three extra boats. Never the less after a swim, a pin and multiple blows to the head (Ben’s head, he figured about 15) we were all missing our creek boats. Day two went a little smother with no problems…Ben only hit his head once.

The river it’s self is very cool, or like the Mexicans say Chido (like the chip things). Continuous class three with a few four sections and a nice class five drop at the end El Chorro. The drop consists of a boulder garden run in, a boof and an s-turn that pushes you into a wall just before a fifteen foot drop with a sticky hole at the bottom. On top of that there’s a cave behind the falls and undercut eddies on both sides once your out of the hole with all the water funnelling into them. It went well considering the play boat factor. I had to paddle hard to get through the hydraulic but hit my line and got through the slot between the eddies with ease.

Next up was the Rio Copalita, a really mellow river with some good catch on the fly waves and few good pocket holes. We took our time and enjoyed the Jungle scenery and blue, green water for our last day in Salina Cruz.

Now were off to Vera Cruz for some paddling on the Eastern rivers and one of our last stops before we go our separate ways. Were about hit another stretch of Topes so I better cut this off and get out of the car to lighten up the load (seriously). Be on the look out for what goes on in Vera Cruz. Paddle Hard!