Tue 1843 Almost exactly two weeks to go until my flight leaves. I'm sitting outside the cabin at the Eco Lodge. I think I might actually be the only person in at least this block of cabins. There's some more further down the river towards some of the falls, but honestly I think it's just me here at the moment. It's kind of weird, very slightly creepy, also sort of cool. I can hear the river because it runs right past the cabin like, you know, I hope it helps me sleep rather than is annoying.
Not sure this place is actually called the Eco Lodge, but you know, it's cabins inside the park. Expensive, not too bad. Anyway, I'll call it the Eco Lodge.
I didn't sleep too badly, not super well. I was awake before my 7 o'clock alarm but I didn't want to get up at 7. I think I snoozed and I actually got up about 7.30. I wasn't asleep with the snooze, it was just snoozing on the alarm. I'm voice typing this by the way since I'm too lazy to get the keyboard out and since I seem to have pretty good privacy and I'm not saying anything really sensitive. I thought I'll go with the voice typing.
Anyway, I packed no real problems. I handed the key over to the bloke at reception as I left, no fuss. I think it was about 8.15 by the time I left the hotel. So, not really a huge deal. It turns out the place where I thought I could get the collectivo to the falls - El Chiflón - actually doesn't probably only goes to tzimol or what it was called. But the guy said, I'll go to the boulevard and I guessed That was what the main highway was called and also my guidebook did say something about an hourly service and I spotted the name of the place across the road and as I was crossing some guy called out El Chiflón and I first said oh no thanks and I realised what he said and then I went and talked to him so long story short I got on a collectivo for I think 50 pesos I waited 10 minutes and then we set off took a while not forever and we got here no problem.
Just been into the room to put some insect repellent on because I had a mosquito on the back of my hand. I don't think it's particularly bad here, but you know, I take chances.
As I expected, there was about a kilometer walk up the path from where the bus drops you off to the entrance. No problem at all, really. I didn't see any tuk-tuk really, but I didn't want one, so that was fine. I got checked in, no problem. I was probably checked in by about 10. According to the stuff on the wall, check-in's actually at 3pm, but the woman who I'd been WhatsApp-ing and who I saw at the kind of reception counter after going to the wrong place first, she said when I booked this over WhatsApp that I could check in from 8. Anyway, so I got checked in. The room is actually quite nice. I just remembered again when I went in for the repellent that when you're going from outside it's like there's a fan running because you go in and there's the water running past. It's quite nice in a way but also a bit weird. There is a fan but I haven't tried turning it on yet. It's quite cool in the room. It seems quite shady and the walls are quite thick and substantial and so forth. It's definitely cooler in the room than outside during the day.
So I set off for the walk up the falls about quarter past ten, maybe check the photo timestamp or the GPS logs if I really want to know. There's a sign saying it's like one and a bit kilometers, maybe one and a half, one point two. I thought oh that's going to take no time at all, but it's really uphill. Especially the lower parts of it, it's all very nice, tidy, concrete steps. I think it's even wheelchair accessible for the first few falls. Towards the top it's a little bit more It's definitely not like you're walking through even, you know, wilderness path or anything like that.
I think I was there early enough that it wasn't too hot to start with, although it did get sunnier and warmer as it went on. Not unbearably so, but, you know, kind of sweaty and so on. I was wearing the same clothes I'd worn yesterday, so that was not too bad.
A couple of people spoke to me at one two points asking me to take a photo or I assumed to take a photo and people would say, where are you from and we'd have a little bit of a chat, not very often, nothing major but, you know, kind of nice.
The falls really are pretty cool. I mean, I remember going around the corner and seeing the brides veil, you know, unexpectedly and it's like, oh wow, it really is pretty good, you know. I won't compare it to iguazu Falls because it's just different, right? The falls are not the same style of falls, but it is very good, there's no denying. The water is a lovely light blue kind of colour. I was tempted when I first saw it to say it looked kind of glacial, but I don't think it has that really light turquoise that I would have Rightly or wrongly associated with a glacier.
It is a little bit muddy at the top two falls, but there's hand rails, and all I've got a few splashes of mud on these trails that are which are due to be changed anyway. It's not a huge detail, it's not, and they'll probably scrape off, you know, when they're dry or something. I can probably give them a water only wash at the next hostel, which I'll talk about in a second.
You do get sprayed with water from some of the viewpoints near like the brides veil and the top one and the handrails are a bit sort of slimy and they've actually got rubber matting on the floor at the brides veil which is quite nice so that helps make it safer and I guess reduces mud splatter on your trails or whatever.
I was a bit confused by some of the signs as you passed the swimming area because they all say "por el tiempo de lluvia no se permite nadar". That's not what it says I've got photos, something like that. And while I wasn't sure, I kind of assumed that this meant, oh, and it *is* therefore the time of rain and it's not permitted, whereas I think here, poor means more like durante, so to speak. So they don't hang these signs up when it's not permitted, they just hang them up all the time and they only apply when it's the rainy season, which isn't.
It didn't help that because I was there relatively early, as I passed the main swimming area, there's no one in the water. On the way back, just to jump ahead, there were people in there, so I thought, oh yeah, probably you can. And when I got to the checkpoint at the start of the trail, I asked and they said, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can swim, it's fine.
I felt a tiny bit annoyed when I thought maybe I couldn't swim because part of the reason for paying the extra stay in the lodge here was to be able to swim because that's as I said yesterday a faff if you've got to go all the way back when you're on your own there's no one to guard your stuff while you swim. wasn't the end of the world and even without being here now at night on my own which is kind of cool and weird the room was quite nice and 20 quid extra compared to being in comitan tonight isn't the end of the world but slightly annoying. As it turned out, then that wasn't an issue and I'll talk about swimming later. When I was looking for the reception when I first got here I went to what turned out to be the entrance to the trail and I thought they were doing like COVID style scanning of your forehead temperature. It turned out they were just scanning the wristband you get at the entrance. I do need to learn the Spanish word for tight, by the way, because I didn't know how to say it when the guy was putting it on, but it was fine. and he understood me.
So I came out after the trail, which probably took me about three or four hours. I wasn't caning it, you know, but I wasn't hanging around excessively. I did try to enjoy each fall as well as taking video. And I went to each one twice, basically, once on the way up and once on the way down. You might think the very top most one that didn't make sense, but because the organic maps shows an extra trail that actually doesn't exist, I ended up going back. I thought I'd missed something so anyway I actually did go to each fall twice roughly speaking once on the way up and once on the way down. It did take way too many photos and I suspect all the video I felt obliged to take has burned up loads of storage space but it should be okay.
1900 I've been writing this more or less continuously, but I'll throw in a timestamp to show how the time is going by.
So by the time I got back it was something like quarter past two maybe. So I went to the onsite restaurant, I checked the menu out earlier, a little bit expensive but not insane. I had a not actually that bad carne asada, with undressed salad and tortillas and frijoles and chips. I think that was 210 and it was 40 for a coke and then I gave a 10% tip. I went for the full fat coke because I thought well you know I don't know how many calories I might need or want or be able to fet today so let's Yes, have the extra ones even if sugar is not a great way to get calories.
After that I went to an iguana observation point that I'd noticed earlier. It's just a fence by a little sort of hillside running down towards the river. But there are iguanas basking around there. That's quite cool. I actually went twice because the first time I had the 06 with me and then I went back and sorted my swimming gear out and then popped back with the P7. There's actually an ambulance waiting there presumably in case of need as well as the first aid station right by there. It seems a bit odd somehow that they have an ambulance waiting permanently. but I guess you know it's a van, it's a site and they're maybe not short of money.
So I was a bit edgy but I put my swimming gear on and I went over and I walked over wearing the flip-flops and you know the t-shirt and the bandana on my head and I struggled to find the swimming place exactly because no one was there anymore because it was about quarter past four at this point when I hoped the UV would be lower and the water had as much time to warm up as it could and I think most of the day visitors will have gone home by that point since maybe while there was no one else in the water even though I'd seen some earlier.
So I asked a guy at one of the kiosks and he was fine and he vaguely pointed me out and I went in the water and it was a bit cold but not terrible and the bit I went in was not very deep it was like although of course I was a bit cautious because there was no one else around no lifeguards or anything it was like probably a metre, a metre and a half deep top it's probably near a metre there was quite a current you know and that was kind of cool but also a bit annoying and there were quite a lot of rocks should do some swimming, a bit of breast, mostly front crawl. So, I did do a bit of swimming, but you know, after a bit, and I was struggling with the swimming, as always, just, no, I don't know why it's so much harder compared to how it was at the pool. Not that was great, but anyway, whatever it is. But, you know, I'd swim, and even if you're going against the current, it's harder and slower, I'd still run into rocks and stuff. There were some places upstream where there's either four or seven metres of depth. I don't know if there's two, or I misread the sign one time, but that would probably be much better because I'm sure if it's that deep the rocks are down the bottom and you can swim unobstructed but what with the current and that depth and no lifeguards and my relatively rudimentary swimming skills and you know not even swimming that much lately there's no way I'm chancing that so at least I had a go and I went in the water and it was quite pleasantly cool and stuff so that's fine. And this makes me feel a bit better about having stayed here for the night and it's all practice and all I guess helps keep the swimming habit up slightly ready for when I'm back home.
If it wasn't for the swimming to be honest, I will be honest. It's kind of cool to have this quite nice, expensive cabin by the water and even in a strange way to be here tonight on my own, sitting out here. But if it wasn't for the swimming, it would have been much more convenient and cheaper to just come from Comitane and stay back at the same hotel in Comitane. I'd have saved £20 on the accommodation. I'd have got an hour of the return journey to San cris done today rather than having to do it tomorrow morning. there's an animal oh it's a cat there's a cat wandering around across the other side of the path.
So when I was back at the hostel after going to the falls and eating and then I came back to the room before I went to look at the lizards and swim I got in touch with the old hostel in San Crist and I booked a room there for Wednesday Thursday Friday night. Slightly earlier than I would like to be there in some sense because it would be more fun I think to be in San Crist Thursday Friday Saturday but I can still stay on the Saturday night and I think In some ways, there's no point wasting the Wednesday. I could, in theory, stay at one of the hotels, which are not listed on booking.com, and maybe I should make more of a point of looking on Google Maps or Hostile World or whatever. I suspect some of the hostels just outside the park gates are cheaper, even if they aren't necessarily cheap. I could, for example, stay somewhere local and do the other side of the falls tomorrow. But having seen them today, I'm not that bothered. I don't think the difference between the two is that great. I don't think it's like Igrasu Falls and even that I did years apart.
I also, I think to be honest, even if it was 15 pounds a night, it's kind of cool here, but especially given how sort of dead it is at night. Even if I had two months of the trip left, I probably wouldn't, and it was 15 pounds, I probably wouldn't stay here another night, you know. So, anyway, the way it's worked out, I'm done round Comitane for this trip, so it makes sense to go back to San Cristobal tomorrow.
I did when I was heading down the fall path this morning think, oh I might do this again afternoon and then again tomorrow morning before I leave that was before I realized how steep it was and that it does actually take quite a while. I just might walk to some of the lower falls tomorrow morning I've got to check out at 12 but if I was up at 7 or 7.30 to be on the trail at 8 I think it opens. I asked and apparently my wristband is good for tomorrow as well. I could probably walk up to the lower ones even if I wouldn't go all The way to the top.
Anyway, so after I went swimming wasn't ever long, I might have been in the water swimming for 10 or 15 minutes. It's really hard to say I forgot to check my watch. You know, anything's better than nothing. I came back to the room and I had a shower. And just as I was about to get in the shower, which does actually have quite nice hot water, there was a fairly big spider on the bathroom floor. Not as big as the one I saw going up the steps to the tuck when I was at the beach at night at Puerto Escondido. But fairly big, probably bigger than you'd get back home. Maybe five centimetre leg span, I don't know, I took some pictures. I didn't freak out to be honest, but it would have been nice to catch it so it wasn't in there, but I had no glass. I did, after I'd had a shower, I sort of ignored the spider and it scuttled away and then it was hanging around by a cupboard and maybe it went outside under the door or maybe it hid under the cupboard but as long as out of the way I'm not too forced. I would probably have caught it, it was sitting there perfect for me to put a glass over it but I didn't have a glass. I'd finish showering and got dressed. I did go out to the reception desk, but it was shut. It wasn't too upset or surprised. I knew it was shutting around at time.
Anyway, some staff guy who wasn't the woman who works in the reception desk spoke to me and I ignored him at first by accident and I talked to him and I said about thebwpiser and thw tit had gone now but ibwaa hoping to get a glass to catch it if it came back ans he said oh no they're shut sorry and I asked him would it be dangerous and he said no no it wouldn't be and I didn't cut up rough and I said oh you know I know we're in the countryside here you know it's fine it's fine but anyway so it's probably hiding somewhere I just hope it doesn't give me an nasty shot but didn't freak me out too much and it kind of cool to see it but you know there are limits. Did pretty well really compare to how i would have reacted a few years ago so that's kind of cool. Fingers crossed there's no nasty surprises waiting for me.
So anyway, I didn't realise but I thought I'd be able to get a beer. There's a few kiosks around and there's the restaurant. The kiosks were shut and then suddenly thought, oh the restaurant's gonna be shut too isn't it? And I went up and I spoke to them and they said, yes we're short, the only places are off site. The woman who checked me and had told me that although they shut at five or something for coming in, for me I wasn't sure if she needed to arrange it or not, I could get in up to late. It was about half an hour, 20 minutes before sunset at this point.
So there's the usual dog issue as well as can I get back as I'm heading out. I sent her WhatsApp message to the woman, although she didn't get back and I messaged again to tell her it's fine when I did get back. As I'm heading out, you can see all the kind of staff on buses and motorbikes and stuff going up the path. So I walked the kilometer back into town and some guy said did i want colectivo to comitan reasonably enough but I said no. And I made a point of speaking to everyone at the security checkpoints. And they went through just to say, can I come back? And they said, yes, up until eight o'clock. And I don't think they would have actually put any barriers down, but anyway.
So there were a few restaurants on the path, but I didn't really want to go in and ask them for a takeout. They didn't look that suitable. There were a couple of shops by the public road where the collectivos dropped you off, so I dashed into one, bought a couple of cans of Corona, big 710 millilitre ones and some crisps and a small bottle of Coke. And I paid 129 for that, which seems a lot, but maybe isn't insane. They were big beers and the beers on site would have cost me 50, maybe plus 10% tip, for probably 4-7-3 mils, if not 3-3. 30 mils, so not so bad. And I walked back and as I was getting back it was like starting to get slightly dim but you know the sun had probably set about five minutes. There were no real issues with dogs on the way back and I said hi to all the staff at the gates and you know when I got back to the room and it's fine.
So I sat down and I had my first beer, which I'm still finishing now, and I watched a brief YouTube video and then I started writing this and voice typing. So I'm not Stone Cold Sober, but I'm certainly not drunk, and most of the weirdness is just voice typing, plus me being a bit lazy about correcting it, although I am trying to fix up the worst things when I notice them.
1920 I've been writing continuously timestamps just to show how long I'm taking for this. So I'm going to have another beer in a bit and I've got some crisps and some coke and I'll have some of those. I had my pan canella at the top of the falls. I've got some iced pan canella which I might have tomorrow morning or something.
I didn't have to go out, you know, I had eaten at the restaurant, although I didn't realise quite how critical it was, but luckily I had done. So, but you know, I thought I'd be hanging around and a beer would be nice and some sort of snack would be nice. So, what the hell? But I didn't have to go out.
Incidentally, with respect to the voice typing versus the Bluetooth keyboard, like I say, I've got a table in the room where it's a bit low, and I'm sitting at this probably about ideally height table outside. I could have got the Bluetooth keyboard and my reading glasses out. In some ways the keyboard is nice, but I'm not at least yet as fluent on it as I would be on a real keyboard. And while I would probably make fewer errors, and the errors I made would just be still a little typos that would be easy to ignore in the future rather than ...weird vocal glitches or voice typing errors or random punctuation with voice typing... ...you know, the Bluetooth keyboard is still not trivial to use well. And there is probably an advantage that while the quality isn't as good, the voice typing does encourage me to just ramble in a way that I maybe wouldn't with the Bluetooth keyboard where it's a bit more of an effort. So this is perhaps producing more slightly low quality text, but more notes on how I'm feeling and what I've done, whereas with the Bluetooth keyboard there might be a bit of a tendency to elide things slightly or not mention something, to save typing something painfully. I don't know, but just an observation.
1923 Okay, I finished that first can. I left the other beer ans the coke in the bag, my day pack, by the open window, by the river end of the room. It's cooler in the room. That beer I just finisjed wasn't too hot, so the other one's probably fine, but I don't want to save the drinks too late because they'll get warm eventually. So maybe I'll watch a YouTube video and have the other beer and have the crisps. Anyway, I may write more, but I think I've got the bulk of the day down.
1938 Incidentally when I got into the room the towels were on the bed to say like two swans making a heart shape. I've seen that before but the sort of places I stay and it's obviously not common. It's not that often I even get a private double room so I was oddly touched isn't quite the right word but you know impressed. I actually left them like that for quite a while but when I had a shower I obviously had to take that apart and that kind of quote art unquote is obviously transient anyway and very easy for them to remake. I did kind of try to dissect how it was made and I took a few photos. I've seen YouTube videos how to do it but I'm sure there's more than one way. It's like there were three towels and one of them was actually different to others and it seemed a bit more complex and I thought well also simple but anyway just an observation.
There is technically quite a stiff penalty for overstaying the checkout point. It's like half a day's fucking rent, but probably okay, but I don't seriously expect to fall foul of it anyway.
I'm glad I did get to have a swim here in if it was a bit weird but obviously it's not a cenote anyway so I think of the things I could have done but I haven't swimming in a cenote is probably top of the list maybe Canyon del Sumadero I'll have another go at that from San Cristobal again. Yes, technically I swam in Cinote on that boat trip which gave me a fever in Bacala, but you know, I was wearing a life jacket and the water was like a metre, metre and a half deep. It wasn't really a swim, you know.
If I do leave Sankris on Saturday night, I think I've got about 10 days left of the trip. I do need to remember that is not nothing even if I've got to get several hundred kilometres back to Cancun. There's certainly time to call in somewhere else. Maybe there's a Cenote near Sankris. I could possibly still fly back from say Tuxler to Cancun, but we'll see how it goes. I want to get to Sankris and maybe do the Sumodero Tour and so forth and hopefully have some fun there and a few drinks.
The second beer, I'm still probably about a third of the way through. It got two thirds left. It's not hot, it's still cool, but you know, it's definitely not absolutely massively chilled. I'm enjoying it, but I'm not super enjoying it, but you know, I'm kind of glad I've got it. random observation.
Maybe there's someone in the next cabin being really annoyed by me doing this voice typing, but as I do this I've not seen anyone coming around. A couple did seem to be leaving maybe an hour or so ago. I don't even remember it was a long time, but I've seen no sign of anyone else in any of these other cabins in the little sort of terraced block.
In theory I guess I could wander down to the river and head out and walk along the falls in the dark but it'd probably be creepy as fuck. I probably wouldn't be able to say anything and obviously I could slip and fall and drown or something and call me a coward but I just see absolutely no benefit whatsoever to doing that.
1946 Okay, I did just go out of the little gated-off area outside the cabins. My cabin incidentally is named after the hostel I was in in Baccala, which is kind of cool. It's also the one nearest to the entrance to the trail down by the falls, and I just went and had a look and snapped a few photos. And yeah, there's a rope across half of the entrance to the path, and just to prove a point. I wandered down it, and as far as I can tell, I wouldn't even have to jump over or climb under a trivial rope barrier to actually go and walk as far as I wanted down the river, if I were an idiot (there would be no lights and I'd see nothing) I guess I could walk two hours up to the top of the falls and two hours back. I guess it makes sense the barrier isn't absolutely solid because there are some duplex cabins, a few hundred meters down the path that side of the barrier. Anyway, just the observation that it's technically possible. There are quite a lot of lights on all around me. It's far from dark here. It's not just the outside little terrace area with the gate of the cabins, the paths around. I'm the little complex here all lit up, presuming there's a security guard somewhere who might even stop me if I was stupid enough to go wandering down the path. I don't think it would necessarily be dangerous to walk a couple hundred metres down the path but it would be creepy and I'm not sure there'd be any light showing the water and I don't think there's any real benefit from doing it so call me a coward if you like but I'm not going to.
I probably said the other day that one of the things I would sort of like to do in the abstract that just doesn't seem to have panned out on this trip is some quote serious, unquote hiking, you know, like going up near paramillo del quindio in Colombia. But it just doesn't seem to have come in the way where I've been. I'm not saying if you were hardcore you couldn't have trogged up into the hills around some of the towns I've been. I met a Slovakian guy who I think said he'd walked up in some of the hills around San Cris and done some long circuits but, you know, there hasn't really been any big obvious thing to do in the hiking sense. It's fine, while it kind of makes me think, oh, perhaps my physical condition has collapsed since a year ago and I'll never get it back. I've no real reason to believe that's the case. Yes, the idea of doing something like the Parameo hike is kind of scary, but it was kind of scary at the time. And no, it wasn't trivial slogging up the hills and slogging down the hills, but I've no real reason to believe I couldn't do it this year or that I won't be able to do it next year. I just haven't done it. Also, you know, when I'm walking up the falls today, my trousers are annoying because I've got too much crap in like the knee pockets and stuff, but I'm still walking and it's not a trivial walk and obviously if I was doing a longer hike or I thought things through better and planned, how to stash stuff better, I wouldn't need this stuff in the pockets or, you know, on a hike, I'd put it in my backpack. There's no real reason to think that I've lost condition massively, so to speak, you know. I don't think I'm quite that old that a year or two when I'm taking exercise generally is going to make that much difference.
I kind of wish I'd bought more snacks at that shop, but even though I was there in a hurry, I did also kind of think, no, I shouldn't go and buy loads and loads of snacks, because that's just going to pile on the unhealthiness. I'm certainly not hungry. I've still got those iced (glasses) pan canela, I could eat them, but it's pretty best to save those for tomorrow, so I'm not hungry until I get to St. Chris. Anyway, I've also got some nuts from the UK I've been looking around. I could have those but they are (deliberately) a bit borkng and untemptong and as I an not actually hungry I will stick with this beer and the diet coke I bought.
For what it's worth, there's a couple of probably 600 mill bottles of bottled water in the room. I've started drinking one of them. I'll finish the other tomorrow. I've got my filter with me so I can have as much water as I want, but it does have a slightly funny taste from the bag, I think, because I tested it with drinking water back home. It's not that the water going into it tastes funny. It adds a taste to the water coming out of it. I guess that might wear off over time. Anyway, although it's expensive here, It is nice that they give you these couple of bottles of water strange how you can feel grateful or something like that when it really is very expensive but anyway.
1958 There's no denying it's kind of cool to be here quote on my own quote at night like this. Not sure in itself it's worth the money but you know on top of the swimming and there's an experience and the nicest room. Not the comet and private room wasn't quite nice to be honest. You know it's something and the money's not huge.
Anyway, what I was going to say earlier is that they do zip lining here (tirolesa in Spanish, I has learned this at other parks where they theoretically offered it but not one was around to do it even if I had wanted to). I'm slightly tempted, but not massively tempted. It's like I've got photos of the prices, but it's like 200, 300, 650, depending on how many of the zip lines you want to do. Even the long, I think the total thing is like 1,300 metres for 650. It's not nothing, but I did it in Costa Rica. It was only a couple of years ago. I'm not desperate to do it. I don't really, I mean, you know, theoretically I could walk up and zip line back tomorrow, but 650 is not nothing. I'm not that excited to do it. 650 isn't a lot if I really wanted to do it. You know, I think some of the Costa Rica ones are much longer. It would probably be good to do it again at some point, although perhaps it would be more exciting and new experiences to do something like a bungee jump, given I quite enjoyed the extreme-ish stuff at the end of the Costa Rica stuff. But I also don't like feeling I ought to do things just because they're waved in front of me and they're not ridiculously expensive. I did see a few people doing it and some very shortish but you know not trivial queues during my walk up the falls today. Not saying I won't do it tomorrow but I'm really not that fussed. It's not going to be a deathbed regret. But you know maybe let's say next year if I travel somewhere it would be good to do it again to prove to myself I can still do it if I can't find something like bungee jumping. I'm not scared to do it really, it's just, I'd almost rather do the walking and the exercise and save the money and it, you know, anyway, mixed feelings, but not a big deal.
2006 Yeah, you voice typing totally through away half what I said. Just being for a piss, the spider is sitting about six inches off the floor, on the door frame by the toilet. It's not moving, not doing any harm, probably theoretically eating mosquitoes or something, but, you know, I wish I had just chucked it out. Anyway, I'm not picking it up because who knows. Apart from general phobia-ish kind of stuff, it might bite me, I don't know. It's all very well, that guy's saying they're not dangerous, but that doesn't mean it won't bite. Anyway. Yes, of course. I held my hand near it just for scale and I'm guessing with its legs in that kind of natural bent position a spider has when it's sitting on the wall it's maybe about as big as you know The fingertip two joints of my right index finger, may be a bit bigger anyway, I don't know what would that be about. Maybe a bit over 5cm more if you stretch the legs out I suppose. Anyway for what it's worth.
Probably fairly obvious and I may be said but I haven't got and checked but with regard to the swimming obviously if it's like four meters deep the rocks are probably not an issue and you can really swim but what with the current and that being deep and no lifeguards and my current level of skill and the fact that I haven't swum much lately no wayon earth am I risking swimming in 4m or more of water right now so that's why I stuck with that bit where I hoped and as it turned out it was fairly shallow the rocks are a bit of a pisser but you know I was able to swim a bit and every little helps.
2020 I've probably already said at some point, but not that I've read it for a few weeks, reading FF3W and also talking to Yuri and looking at his very old guidebook. I do half wish I'd been able to be a backpacker back in that late 90s kind of era, you know, maybe before the internet was too much of a thing and the atmosphere was still perhaps a bit like it had been for the last 20 or 30 years of backpacking.
But, you know, that was not on the cards for me back then. Technically, it was a possibility, but my personality, my view of the world, my financial situation, it was just not there. It's a shame, but can't be helped, you know. I was so far away from having the courage to do that, and something that even now, I look back, and of course you look back and you always think about the past, you think people have operations there, and aesthetic and stuff. Overblown analogy, but you know Anyway, like, even now, as someone who has travelled quite a bit in today's modern, cushy world, notwithstanding that things are a bit different post 2020 and stuff, it's like, even now, as someone who does travel, I look back and I think, oh my god, it must have been so scary. But therefore also, that was part of what made it cool, I guess, in a not-posey way, just, you know, it was an adventure, more So, you know, no way was it on the cards for me at the time. I suppose, you know, I should be pleased that I've managed to develop myself to a point where I can at least do modern style of backpackery travel, which is also not something I would have been able to do back in the late 90s, and not just for financial reasons. You know, give myself some credit.
As I said earlier though, seeing the hotels just outside the park, which are not as far as I can tell on booking.com, but they might be on hostile world, I don't know. In some sense, I should be less lazy and hunt out these kind of things, and that would help me maybe get off the beaten track more. But as I also think I said before, it's amazing how rushed things can feel when I'm travelling. Despite the theoretical loads of time as a tourist, it's always easy to be lazy and I guess the FF3W points that stuff takes a long time when you're traveling in ways it doesn't when you're at home still applies it's just not quite as bad as it was but you know getting laundry done or doing laundry is not the triviality it is when you're at home and you know you are constantly making decisions and maybe I'm making excuses but you know anyway just some notes while they're fresh.
The roof on this block of single level cabins is insanely high and I've just had a quick look and I don't think my ceiling, while by no means low, is anywhere near that high. I've got no idea what's up there, whether it's just some space to act as kind of insulation and keep the sun heat out of the rooms or if the storage up there or what. I don't think it's other accommodation. Anyway, just another random observation.
2031 I just might have that iced canela bread in a bit because I've always got the nuts in case of actual hunger emergency tomorrow and it would probably be quite easy for me to pick something up on the way, you know. Anyway, I was actually just going to say one of the small things I'm actually looking forward to about going to San cris is that Supermax there used to sell like 500 gram bags of mani garapiñado for like forty or forty five pesos. So, probably you can get them that cheap elsewhere in Mexico but it's like I haven't happened to come across it and it's like I do like caramelised peanuts and I'm sure you can get them back home but they don't seem to be as common as maybe in Latin America and I had probably two 500 gram bags while I was in San Crist last time and it's like guzzled them all myself and I'm probably gonna get a 500 grand bag when I'm there and guzzled them all myself so yeah that would be nice. In a not too preachy way, sometimes it's the small things that help make days enjoyable and travel enjoyable. And I know sometimes I've been thinking, oh my God, I've got to get up tomorrow and go and travel, but I am really looking forward to having dinner tomorrow night, or I'll go to that place and get some unhealthy food, or I'll go and have a pastry at some bakery. And these little things they do kind of make me happy sometimes. Almost unreasonably happy, apart frpm the health impact I guess it's quite good to have these little things making you happy, I guess.
Oh, well, having a shower after discovering and being able to do anything with the spider and deciding I'd just ignore it after I'd been in about five or ten minutes. A leaf suddenly appeared on my leg and I did go, ugh! Don't really blame myself. I'm not sure where a leaf came from. Five or ten minutes after I'd been in a shower, you know, I could have picked some leaves up on the soles of my flip-flops, which I had on in the shower because I wanted to wash all my gear off after swimming. But after five or ten minutes, how the hell did that happen? was the leaf hiding in my hair somehow and finally got dislodged? I don't know but you know I did go uhhh not freak out but have a little second panic or something but semi understandable and way better than I would have done in the past.
2037 Nearly finished, but not quite finished the second beer. So that's like two and a bit pints at four and a half percent, not too insane. I'm still sitting outside, there's a little bit of a breeze getting up and it's actually quite, I'm not wearing the fleece fairly obviously to me now, but maybe not to me reading this. But it's actually quite pleasantly warm and then the breeze is just pleasantly cool. Yeah, very nice actually.
It's much lower here than in St Chris or Commetan and as that blog post mentioned it's definitely hotter and stickier here but you know in the room it's been nice even during the day out here it's quite nice it hasn't been awful it's still 600 meters which I guess helps anyway just random observations
Probably said before, as a general rule it's like the last night before you have to move somewhere else is a bit sucky and that means that single night's days are inherently a bit sucky because you don't have that, oh I've got a fairly chilled day tomorrow and I can kind of get up when I wanand j have a secure base and i will be sleepong here tomorrow night toot. Yeah it's not as simple as that because you could be staying somewhere for several days and still have a tour in the morning but you know even so there is still something about that last night thing. It's a shame to have to leave tomorrow, but I also really, even if it was cheaper and even if I hadn't more time, I don't really want to stay. If it was cheaper and I hadn't more time, I might stay for a second day here, but it would be a bit borderline even so. And since neither of those is true, you know, it's not. And it's still nice to be staying for a single night and have all the slightly weird experience of being here, even if I'd rather there wasn't a spider in the room that I can't eject because I don't have a glass. you know, not a huge deal.
First I didn't say the onsite restaurant here, while a tiny bit expensive was not actually that much more expensive than I might have expected, you know. I may even eat tomorrow, for example, at that place that I was eating in San Christ before where I got the steak and salad and stuff, 180. You know, base price was 200, maybe the San Christ place includes a free drink and you know, but the restaurant here was maybe A little pricey but not the, oh my god, ridiculous premium price because you're a captive audience that I was expecting.
2047 Finish the second beer. We'll probably have the iced bread with the coke. I'll do fucking duolingo first by way of penance.
2053 Been in to get the Diet Coke which is only slightly cool and the iced bread. I think it's actually cooler out here than inside at last so I've now left the room door open to try and exchange some more heat.
2102 For what it's worth, I kind of mostly unpacked my backpack earlier because, you know, I have a private room and I was looking for stuff like my swimming gear. I may repack it tonight, probably wait till tomorrow. There's a few like water bottles that I brought from the UK that I probably shouldn't be lugging around that are bulking it out a little bit but not too much junk really.
2111 Okay, just been in and done a bit of packing of the dry type stuff. Hopefully the swimming gear will dry off a bit overnight. Spiders still there. I guess in a way it's quite cool the way they just sit there and don't move that much. Anyway, I just wish I could get the thing out, but what are you going to do?
2119 Screen protector on the P7 is getting increasingly worse, it's bubbling up around the right hand side but hey I guess it's still protecting the screen and as long as I don't tear it it'll see the trip out and I can replace it when I get home. It's just mildly annoying. I keep kind of squeezing the bubbles out and trying to stick it back down but it keeps popping back up but maybe keeping doing it is vaguely beneficial.
Not sure this place is actually called the Eco Lodge, but you know, it's cabins inside the park. Expensive, not too bad. Anyway, I'll call it the Eco Lodge.
I didn't sleep too badly, not super well. I was awake before my 7 o'clock alarm but I didn't want to get up at 7. I think I snoozed and I actually got up about 7.30. I wasn't asleep with the snooze, it was just snoozing on the alarm. I'm voice typing this by the way since I'm too lazy to get the keyboard out and since I seem to have pretty good privacy and I'm not saying anything really sensitive. I thought I'll go with the voice typing.
Anyway, I packed no real problems. I handed the key over to the bloke at reception as I left, no fuss. I think it was about 8.15 by the time I left the hotel. So, not really a huge deal. It turns out the place where I thought I could get the collectivo to the falls - El Chiflón - actually doesn't probably only goes to tzimol or what it was called. But the guy said, I'll go to the boulevard and I guessed That was what the main highway was called and also my guidebook did say something about an hourly service and I spotted the name of the place across the road and as I was crossing some guy called out El Chiflón and I first said oh no thanks and I realised what he said and then I went and talked to him so long story short I got on a collectivo for I think 50 pesos I waited 10 minutes and then we set off took a while not forever and we got here no problem.
Just been into the room to put some insect repellent on because I had a mosquito on the back of my hand. I don't think it's particularly bad here, but you know, I take chances.
As I expected, there was about a kilometer walk up the path from where the bus drops you off to the entrance. No problem at all, really. I didn't see any tuk-tuk really, but I didn't want one, so that was fine. I got checked in, no problem. I was probably checked in by about 10. According to the stuff on the wall, check-in's actually at 3pm, but the woman who I'd been WhatsApp-ing and who I saw at the kind of reception counter after going to the wrong place first, she said when I booked this over WhatsApp that I could check in from 8. Anyway, so I got checked in. The room is actually quite nice. I just remembered again when I went in for the repellent that when you're going from outside it's like there's a fan running because you go in and there's the water running past. It's quite nice in a way but also a bit weird. There is a fan but I haven't tried turning it on yet. It's quite cool in the room. It seems quite shady and the walls are quite thick and substantial and so forth. It's definitely cooler in the room than outside during the day.
So I set off for the walk up the falls about quarter past ten, maybe check the photo timestamp or the GPS logs if I really want to know. There's a sign saying it's like one and a bit kilometers, maybe one and a half, one point two. I thought oh that's going to take no time at all, but it's really uphill. Especially the lower parts of it, it's all very nice, tidy, concrete steps. I think it's even wheelchair accessible for the first few falls. Towards the top it's a little bit more It's definitely not like you're walking through even, you know, wilderness path or anything like that.
I think I was there early enough that it wasn't too hot to start with, although it did get sunnier and warmer as it went on. Not unbearably so, but, you know, kind of sweaty and so on. I was wearing the same clothes I'd worn yesterday, so that was not too bad.
A couple of people spoke to me at one two points asking me to take a photo or I assumed to take a photo and people would say, where are you from and we'd have a little bit of a chat, not very often, nothing major but, you know, kind of nice.
The falls really are pretty cool. I mean, I remember going around the corner and seeing the brides veil, you know, unexpectedly and it's like, oh wow, it really is pretty good, you know. I won't compare it to iguazu Falls because it's just different, right? The falls are not the same style of falls, but it is very good, there's no denying. The water is a lovely light blue kind of colour. I was tempted when I first saw it to say it looked kind of glacial, but I don't think it has that really light turquoise that I would have Rightly or wrongly associated with a glacier.
It is a little bit muddy at the top two falls, but there's hand rails, and all I've got a few splashes of mud on these trails that are which are due to be changed anyway. It's not a huge detail, it's not, and they'll probably scrape off, you know, when they're dry or something. I can probably give them a water only wash at the next hostel, which I'll talk about in a second.
You do get sprayed with water from some of the viewpoints near like the brides veil and the top one and the handrails are a bit sort of slimy and they've actually got rubber matting on the floor at the brides veil which is quite nice so that helps make it safer and I guess reduces mud splatter on your trails or whatever.
I was a bit confused by some of the signs as you passed the swimming area because they all say "por el tiempo de lluvia no se permite nadar". That's not what it says I've got photos, something like that. And while I wasn't sure, I kind of assumed that this meant, oh, and it *is* therefore the time of rain and it's not permitted, whereas I think here, poor means more like durante, so to speak. So they don't hang these signs up when it's not permitted, they just hang them up all the time and they only apply when it's the rainy season, which isn't.
It didn't help that because I was there relatively early, as I passed the main swimming area, there's no one in the water. On the way back, just to jump ahead, there were people in there, so I thought, oh yeah, probably you can. And when I got to the checkpoint at the start of the trail, I asked and they said, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can swim, it's fine.
I felt a tiny bit annoyed when I thought maybe I couldn't swim because part of the reason for paying the extra stay in the lodge here was to be able to swim because that's as I said yesterday a faff if you've got to go all the way back when you're on your own there's no one to guard your stuff while you swim. wasn't the end of the world and even without being here now at night on my own which is kind of cool and weird the room was quite nice and 20 quid extra compared to being in comitan tonight isn't the end of the world but slightly annoying. As it turned out, then that wasn't an issue and I'll talk about swimming later. When I was looking for the reception when I first got here I went to what turned out to be the entrance to the trail and I thought they were doing like COVID style scanning of your forehead temperature. It turned out they were just scanning the wristband you get at the entrance. I do need to learn the Spanish word for tight, by the way, because I didn't know how to say it when the guy was putting it on, but it was fine. and he understood me.
So I came out after the trail, which probably took me about three or four hours. I wasn't caning it, you know, but I wasn't hanging around excessively. I did try to enjoy each fall as well as taking video. And I went to each one twice, basically, once on the way up and once on the way down. You might think the very top most one that didn't make sense, but because the organic maps shows an extra trail that actually doesn't exist, I ended up going back. I thought I'd missed something so anyway I actually did go to each fall twice roughly speaking once on the way up and once on the way down. It did take way too many photos and I suspect all the video I felt obliged to take has burned up loads of storage space but it should be okay.
1900 I've been writing this more or less continuously, but I'll throw in a timestamp to show how the time is going by.
So by the time I got back it was something like quarter past two maybe. So I went to the onsite restaurant, I checked the menu out earlier, a little bit expensive but not insane. I had a not actually that bad carne asada, with undressed salad and tortillas and frijoles and chips. I think that was 210 and it was 40 for a coke and then I gave a 10% tip. I went for the full fat coke because I thought well you know I don't know how many calories I might need or want or be able to fet today so let's Yes, have the extra ones even if sugar is not a great way to get calories.
After that I went to an iguana observation point that I'd noticed earlier. It's just a fence by a little sort of hillside running down towards the river. But there are iguanas basking around there. That's quite cool. I actually went twice because the first time I had the 06 with me and then I went back and sorted my swimming gear out and then popped back with the P7. There's actually an ambulance waiting there presumably in case of need as well as the first aid station right by there. It seems a bit odd somehow that they have an ambulance waiting permanently. but I guess you know it's a van, it's a site and they're maybe not short of money.
So I was a bit edgy but I put my swimming gear on and I went over and I walked over wearing the flip-flops and you know the t-shirt and the bandana on my head and I struggled to find the swimming place exactly because no one was there anymore because it was about quarter past four at this point when I hoped the UV would be lower and the water had as much time to warm up as it could and I think most of the day visitors will have gone home by that point since maybe while there was no one else in the water even though I'd seen some earlier.
So I asked a guy at one of the kiosks and he was fine and he vaguely pointed me out and I went in the water and it was a bit cold but not terrible and the bit I went in was not very deep it was like although of course I was a bit cautious because there was no one else around no lifeguards or anything it was like probably a metre, a metre and a half deep top it's probably near a metre there was quite a current you know and that was kind of cool but also a bit annoying and there were quite a lot of rocks should do some swimming, a bit of breast, mostly front crawl. So, I did do a bit of swimming, but you know, after a bit, and I was struggling with the swimming, as always, just, no, I don't know why it's so much harder compared to how it was at the pool. Not that was great, but anyway, whatever it is. But, you know, I'd swim, and even if you're going against the current, it's harder and slower, I'd still run into rocks and stuff. There were some places upstream where there's either four or seven metres of depth. I don't know if there's two, or I misread the sign one time, but that would probably be much better because I'm sure if it's that deep the rocks are down the bottom and you can swim unobstructed but what with the current and that depth and no lifeguards and my relatively rudimentary swimming skills and you know not even swimming that much lately there's no way I'm chancing that so at least I had a go and I went in the water and it was quite pleasantly cool and stuff so that's fine. And this makes me feel a bit better about having stayed here for the night and it's all practice and all I guess helps keep the swimming habit up slightly ready for when I'm back home.
If it wasn't for the swimming to be honest, I will be honest. It's kind of cool to have this quite nice, expensive cabin by the water and even in a strange way to be here tonight on my own, sitting out here. But if it wasn't for the swimming, it would have been much more convenient and cheaper to just come from Comitane and stay back at the same hotel in Comitane. I'd have saved £20 on the accommodation. I'd have got an hour of the return journey to San cris done today rather than having to do it tomorrow morning. there's an animal oh it's a cat there's a cat wandering around across the other side of the path.
So when I was back at the hostel after going to the falls and eating and then I came back to the room before I went to look at the lizards and swim I got in touch with the old hostel in San Crist and I booked a room there for Wednesday Thursday Friday night. Slightly earlier than I would like to be there in some sense because it would be more fun I think to be in San Crist Thursday Friday Saturday but I can still stay on the Saturday night and I think In some ways, there's no point wasting the Wednesday. I could, in theory, stay at one of the hotels, which are not listed on booking.com, and maybe I should make more of a point of looking on Google Maps or Hostile World or whatever. I suspect some of the hostels just outside the park gates are cheaper, even if they aren't necessarily cheap. I could, for example, stay somewhere local and do the other side of the falls tomorrow. But having seen them today, I'm not that bothered. I don't think the difference between the two is that great. I don't think it's like Igrasu Falls and even that I did years apart.
I also, I think to be honest, even if it was 15 pounds a night, it's kind of cool here, but especially given how sort of dead it is at night. Even if I had two months of the trip left, I probably wouldn't, and it was 15 pounds, I probably wouldn't stay here another night, you know. So, anyway, the way it's worked out, I'm done round Comitane for this trip, so it makes sense to go back to San Cristobal tomorrow.
I did when I was heading down the fall path this morning think, oh I might do this again afternoon and then again tomorrow morning before I leave that was before I realized how steep it was and that it does actually take quite a while. I just might walk to some of the lower falls tomorrow morning I've got to check out at 12 but if I was up at 7 or 7.30 to be on the trail at 8 I think it opens. I asked and apparently my wristband is good for tomorrow as well. I could probably walk up to the lower ones even if I wouldn't go all The way to the top.
Anyway, so after I went swimming wasn't ever long, I might have been in the water swimming for 10 or 15 minutes. It's really hard to say I forgot to check my watch. You know, anything's better than nothing. I came back to the room and I had a shower. And just as I was about to get in the shower, which does actually have quite nice hot water, there was a fairly big spider on the bathroom floor. Not as big as the one I saw going up the steps to the tuck when I was at the beach at night at Puerto Escondido. But fairly big, probably bigger than you'd get back home. Maybe five centimetre leg span, I don't know, I took some pictures. I didn't freak out to be honest, but it would have been nice to catch it so it wasn't in there, but I had no glass. I did, after I'd had a shower, I sort of ignored the spider and it scuttled away and then it was hanging around by a cupboard and maybe it went outside under the door or maybe it hid under the cupboard but as long as out of the way I'm not too forced. I would probably have caught it, it was sitting there perfect for me to put a glass over it but I didn't have a glass. I'd finish showering and got dressed. I did go out to the reception desk, but it was shut. It wasn't too upset or surprised. I knew it was shutting around at time.
Anyway, some staff guy who wasn't the woman who works in the reception desk spoke to me and I ignored him at first by accident and I talked to him and I said about thebwpiser and thw tit had gone now but ibwaa hoping to get a glass to catch it if it came back ans he said oh no they're shut sorry and I asked him would it be dangerous and he said no no it wouldn't be and I didn't cut up rough and I said oh you know I know we're in the countryside here you know it's fine it's fine but anyway so it's probably hiding somewhere I just hope it doesn't give me an nasty shot but didn't freak me out too much and it kind of cool to see it but you know there are limits. Did pretty well really compare to how i would have reacted a few years ago so that's kind of cool. Fingers crossed there's no nasty surprises waiting for me.
So anyway, I didn't realise but I thought I'd be able to get a beer. There's a few kiosks around and there's the restaurant. The kiosks were shut and then suddenly thought, oh the restaurant's gonna be shut too isn't it? And I went up and I spoke to them and they said, yes we're short, the only places are off site. The woman who checked me and had told me that although they shut at five or something for coming in, for me I wasn't sure if she needed to arrange it or not, I could get in up to late. It was about half an hour, 20 minutes before sunset at this point.
So there's the usual dog issue as well as can I get back as I'm heading out. I sent her WhatsApp message to the woman, although she didn't get back and I messaged again to tell her it's fine when I did get back. As I'm heading out, you can see all the kind of staff on buses and motorbikes and stuff going up the path. So I walked the kilometer back into town and some guy said did i want colectivo to comitan reasonably enough but I said no. And I made a point of speaking to everyone at the security checkpoints. And they went through just to say, can I come back? And they said, yes, up until eight o'clock. And I don't think they would have actually put any barriers down, but anyway.
So there were a few restaurants on the path, but I didn't really want to go in and ask them for a takeout. They didn't look that suitable. There were a couple of shops by the public road where the collectivos dropped you off, so I dashed into one, bought a couple of cans of Corona, big 710 millilitre ones and some crisps and a small bottle of Coke. And I paid 129 for that, which seems a lot, but maybe isn't insane. They were big beers and the beers on site would have cost me 50, maybe plus 10% tip, for probably 4-7-3 mils, if not 3-3. 30 mils, so not so bad. And I walked back and as I was getting back it was like starting to get slightly dim but you know the sun had probably set about five minutes. There were no real issues with dogs on the way back and I said hi to all the staff at the gates and you know when I got back to the room and it's fine.
So I sat down and I had my first beer, which I'm still finishing now, and I watched a brief YouTube video and then I started writing this and voice typing. So I'm not Stone Cold Sober, but I'm certainly not drunk, and most of the weirdness is just voice typing, plus me being a bit lazy about correcting it, although I am trying to fix up the worst things when I notice them.
1920 I've been writing continuously timestamps just to show how long I'm taking for this. So I'm going to have another beer in a bit and I've got some crisps and some coke and I'll have some of those. I had my pan canella at the top of the falls. I've got some iced pan canella which I might have tomorrow morning or something.
I didn't have to go out, you know, I had eaten at the restaurant, although I didn't realise quite how critical it was, but luckily I had done. So, but you know, I thought I'd be hanging around and a beer would be nice and some sort of snack would be nice. So, what the hell? But I didn't have to go out.
Incidentally, with respect to the voice typing versus the Bluetooth keyboard, like I say, I've got a table in the room where it's a bit low, and I'm sitting at this probably about ideally height table outside. I could have got the Bluetooth keyboard and my reading glasses out. In some ways the keyboard is nice, but I'm not at least yet as fluent on it as I would be on a real keyboard. And while I would probably make fewer errors, and the errors I made would just be still a little typos that would be easy to ignore in the future rather than ...weird vocal glitches or voice typing errors or random punctuation with voice typing... ...you know, the Bluetooth keyboard is still not trivial to use well. And there is probably an advantage that while the quality isn't as good, the voice typing does encourage me to just ramble in a way that I maybe wouldn't with the Bluetooth keyboard where it's a bit more of an effort. So this is perhaps producing more slightly low quality text, but more notes on how I'm feeling and what I've done, whereas with the Bluetooth keyboard there might be a bit of a tendency to elide things slightly or not mention something, to save typing something painfully. I don't know, but just an observation.
1923 Okay, I finished that first can. I left the other beer ans the coke in the bag, my day pack, by the open window, by the river end of the room. It's cooler in the room. That beer I just finisjed wasn't too hot, so the other one's probably fine, but I don't want to save the drinks too late because they'll get warm eventually. So maybe I'll watch a YouTube video and have the other beer and have the crisps. Anyway, I may write more, but I think I've got the bulk of the day down.
1938 Incidentally when I got into the room the towels were on the bed to say like two swans making a heart shape. I've seen that before but the sort of places I stay and it's obviously not common. It's not that often I even get a private double room so I was oddly touched isn't quite the right word but you know impressed. I actually left them like that for quite a while but when I had a shower I obviously had to take that apart and that kind of quote art unquote is obviously transient anyway and very easy for them to remake. I did kind of try to dissect how it was made and I took a few photos. I've seen YouTube videos how to do it but I'm sure there's more than one way. It's like there were three towels and one of them was actually different to others and it seemed a bit more complex and I thought well also simple but anyway just an observation.
There is technically quite a stiff penalty for overstaying the checkout point. It's like half a day's fucking rent, but probably okay, but I don't seriously expect to fall foul of it anyway.
I'm glad I did get to have a swim here in if it was a bit weird but obviously it's not a cenote anyway so I think of the things I could have done but I haven't swimming in a cenote is probably top of the list maybe Canyon del Sumadero I'll have another go at that from San Cristobal again. Yes, technically I swam in Cinote on that boat trip which gave me a fever in Bacala, but you know, I was wearing a life jacket and the water was like a metre, metre and a half deep. It wasn't really a swim, you know.
If I do leave Sankris on Saturday night, I think I've got about 10 days left of the trip. I do need to remember that is not nothing even if I've got to get several hundred kilometres back to Cancun. There's certainly time to call in somewhere else. Maybe there's a Cenote near Sankris. I could possibly still fly back from say Tuxler to Cancun, but we'll see how it goes. I want to get to Sankris and maybe do the Sumodero Tour and so forth and hopefully have some fun there and a few drinks.
The second beer, I'm still probably about a third of the way through. It got two thirds left. It's not hot, it's still cool, but you know, it's definitely not absolutely massively chilled. I'm enjoying it, but I'm not super enjoying it, but you know, I'm kind of glad I've got it. random observation.
Maybe there's someone in the next cabin being really annoyed by me doing this voice typing, but as I do this I've not seen anyone coming around. A couple did seem to be leaving maybe an hour or so ago. I don't even remember it was a long time, but I've seen no sign of anyone else in any of these other cabins in the little sort of terraced block.
In theory I guess I could wander down to the river and head out and walk along the falls in the dark but it'd probably be creepy as fuck. I probably wouldn't be able to say anything and obviously I could slip and fall and drown or something and call me a coward but I just see absolutely no benefit whatsoever to doing that.
1946 Okay, I did just go out of the little gated-off area outside the cabins. My cabin incidentally is named after the hostel I was in in Baccala, which is kind of cool. It's also the one nearest to the entrance to the trail down by the falls, and I just went and had a look and snapped a few photos. And yeah, there's a rope across half of the entrance to the path, and just to prove a point. I wandered down it, and as far as I can tell, I wouldn't even have to jump over or climb under a trivial rope barrier to actually go and walk as far as I wanted down the river, if I were an idiot (there would be no lights and I'd see nothing) I guess I could walk two hours up to the top of the falls and two hours back. I guess it makes sense the barrier isn't absolutely solid because there are some duplex cabins, a few hundred meters down the path that side of the barrier. Anyway, just the observation that it's technically possible. There are quite a lot of lights on all around me. It's far from dark here. It's not just the outside little terrace area with the gate of the cabins, the paths around. I'm the little complex here all lit up, presuming there's a security guard somewhere who might even stop me if I was stupid enough to go wandering down the path. I don't think it would necessarily be dangerous to walk a couple hundred metres down the path but it would be creepy and I'm not sure there'd be any light showing the water and I don't think there's any real benefit from doing it so call me a coward if you like but I'm not going to.
I probably said the other day that one of the things I would sort of like to do in the abstract that just doesn't seem to have panned out on this trip is some quote serious, unquote hiking, you know, like going up near paramillo del quindio in Colombia. But it just doesn't seem to have come in the way where I've been. I'm not saying if you were hardcore you couldn't have trogged up into the hills around some of the towns I've been. I met a Slovakian guy who I think said he'd walked up in some of the hills around San Cris and done some long circuits but, you know, there hasn't really been any big obvious thing to do in the hiking sense. It's fine, while it kind of makes me think, oh, perhaps my physical condition has collapsed since a year ago and I'll never get it back. I've no real reason to believe that's the case. Yes, the idea of doing something like the Parameo hike is kind of scary, but it was kind of scary at the time. And no, it wasn't trivial slogging up the hills and slogging down the hills, but I've no real reason to believe I couldn't do it this year or that I won't be able to do it next year. I just haven't done it. Also, you know, when I'm walking up the falls today, my trousers are annoying because I've got too much crap in like the knee pockets and stuff, but I'm still walking and it's not a trivial walk and obviously if I was doing a longer hike or I thought things through better and planned, how to stash stuff better, I wouldn't need this stuff in the pockets or, you know, on a hike, I'd put it in my backpack. There's no real reason to think that I've lost condition massively, so to speak, you know. I don't think I'm quite that old that a year or two when I'm taking exercise generally is going to make that much difference.
I kind of wish I'd bought more snacks at that shop, but even though I was there in a hurry, I did also kind of think, no, I shouldn't go and buy loads and loads of snacks, because that's just going to pile on the unhealthiness. I'm certainly not hungry. I've still got those iced (glasses) pan canela, I could eat them, but it's pretty best to save those for tomorrow, so I'm not hungry until I get to St. Chris. Anyway, I've also got some nuts from the UK I've been looking around. I could have those but they are (deliberately) a bit borkng and untemptong and as I an not actually hungry I will stick with this beer and the diet coke I bought.
For what it's worth, there's a couple of probably 600 mill bottles of bottled water in the room. I've started drinking one of them. I'll finish the other tomorrow. I've got my filter with me so I can have as much water as I want, but it does have a slightly funny taste from the bag, I think, because I tested it with drinking water back home. It's not that the water going into it tastes funny. It adds a taste to the water coming out of it. I guess that might wear off over time. Anyway, although it's expensive here, It is nice that they give you these couple of bottles of water strange how you can feel grateful or something like that when it really is very expensive but anyway.
1958 There's no denying it's kind of cool to be here quote on my own quote at night like this. Not sure in itself it's worth the money but you know on top of the swimming and there's an experience and the nicest room. Not the comet and private room wasn't quite nice to be honest. You know it's something and the money's not huge.
Anyway, what I was going to say earlier is that they do zip lining here (tirolesa in Spanish, I has learned this at other parks where they theoretically offered it but not one was around to do it even if I had wanted to). I'm slightly tempted, but not massively tempted. It's like I've got photos of the prices, but it's like 200, 300, 650, depending on how many of the zip lines you want to do. Even the long, I think the total thing is like 1,300 metres for 650. It's not nothing, but I did it in Costa Rica. It was only a couple of years ago. I'm not desperate to do it. I don't really, I mean, you know, theoretically I could walk up and zip line back tomorrow, but 650 is not nothing. I'm not that excited to do it. 650 isn't a lot if I really wanted to do it. You know, I think some of the Costa Rica ones are much longer. It would probably be good to do it again at some point, although perhaps it would be more exciting and new experiences to do something like a bungee jump, given I quite enjoyed the extreme-ish stuff at the end of the Costa Rica stuff. But I also don't like feeling I ought to do things just because they're waved in front of me and they're not ridiculously expensive. I did see a few people doing it and some very shortish but you know not trivial queues during my walk up the falls today. Not saying I won't do it tomorrow but I'm really not that fussed. It's not going to be a deathbed regret. But you know maybe let's say next year if I travel somewhere it would be good to do it again to prove to myself I can still do it if I can't find something like bungee jumping. I'm not scared to do it really, it's just, I'd almost rather do the walking and the exercise and save the money and it, you know, anyway, mixed feelings, but not a big deal.
2006 Yeah, you voice typing totally through away half what I said. Just being for a piss, the spider is sitting about six inches off the floor, on the door frame by the toilet. It's not moving, not doing any harm, probably theoretically eating mosquitoes or something, but, you know, I wish I had just chucked it out. Anyway, I'm not picking it up because who knows. Apart from general phobia-ish kind of stuff, it might bite me, I don't know. It's all very well, that guy's saying they're not dangerous, but that doesn't mean it won't bite. Anyway. Yes, of course. I held my hand near it just for scale and I'm guessing with its legs in that kind of natural bent position a spider has when it's sitting on the wall it's maybe about as big as you know The fingertip two joints of my right index finger, may be a bit bigger anyway, I don't know what would that be about. Maybe a bit over 5cm more if you stretch the legs out I suppose. Anyway for what it's worth.
Probably fairly obvious and I may be said but I haven't got and checked but with regard to the swimming obviously if it's like four meters deep the rocks are probably not an issue and you can really swim but what with the current and that being deep and no lifeguards and my current level of skill and the fact that I haven't swum much lately no wayon earth am I risking swimming in 4m or more of water right now so that's why I stuck with that bit where I hoped and as it turned out it was fairly shallow the rocks are a bit of a pisser but you know I was able to swim a bit and every little helps.
2020 I've probably already said at some point, but not that I've read it for a few weeks, reading FF3W and also talking to Yuri and looking at his very old guidebook. I do half wish I'd been able to be a backpacker back in that late 90s kind of era, you know, maybe before the internet was too much of a thing and the atmosphere was still perhaps a bit like it had been for the last 20 or 30 years of backpacking.
But, you know, that was not on the cards for me back then. Technically, it was a possibility, but my personality, my view of the world, my financial situation, it was just not there. It's a shame, but can't be helped, you know. I was so far away from having the courage to do that, and something that even now, I look back, and of course you look back and you always think about the past, you think people have operations there, and aesthetic and stuff. Overblown analogy, but you know Anyway, like, even now, as someone who has travelled quite a bit in today's modern, cushy world, notwithstanding that things are a bit different post 2020 and stuff, it's like, even now, as someone who does travel, I look back and I think, oh my god, it must have been so scary. But therefore also, that was part of what made it cool, I guess, in a not-posey way, just, you know, it was an adventure, more So, you know, no way was it on the cards for me at the time. I suppose, you know, I should be pleased that I've managed to develop myself to a point where I can at least do modern style of backpackery travel, which is also not something I would have been able to do back in the late 90s, and not just for financial reasons. You know, give myself some credit.
As I said earlier though, seeing the hotels just outside the park, which are not as far as I can tell on booking.com, but they might be on hostile world, I don't know. In some sense, I should be less lazy and hunt out these kind of things, and that would help me maybe get off the beaten track more. But as I also think I said before, it's amazing how rushed things can feel when I'm travelling. Despite the theoretical loads of time as a tourist, it's always easy to be lazy and I guess the FF3W points that stuff takes a long time when you're traveling in ways it doesn't when you're at home still applies it's just not quite as bad as it was but you know getting laundry done or doing laundry is not the triviality it is when you're at home and you know you are constantly making decisions and maybe I'm making excuses but you know anyway just some notes while they're fresh.
The roof on this block of single level cabins is insanely high and I've just had a quick look and I don't think my ceiling, while by no means low, is anywhere near that high. I've got no idea what's up there, whether it's just some space to act as kind of insulation and keep the sun heat out of the rooms or if the storage up there or what. I don't think it's other accommodation. Anyway, just another random observation.
2031 I just might have that iced canela bread in a bit because I've always got the nuts in case of actual hunger emergency tomorrow and it would probably be quite easy for me to pick something up on the way, you know. Anyway, I was actually just going to say one of the small things I'm actually looking forward to about going to San cris is that Supermax there used to sell like 500 gram bags of mani garapiñado for like forty or forty five pesos. So, probably you can get them that cheap elsewhere in Mexico but it's like I haven't happened to come across it and it's like I do like caramelised peanuts and I'm sure you can get them back home but they don't seem to be as common as maybe in Latin America and I had probably two 500 gram bags while I was in San Crist last time and it's like guzzled them all myself and I'm probably gonna get a 500 grand bag when I'm there and guzzled them all myself so yeah that would be nice. In a not too preachy way, sometimes it's the small things that help make days enjoyable and travel enjoyable. And I know sometimes I've been thinking, oh my God, I've got to get up tomorrow and go and travel, but I am really looking forward to having dinner tomorrow night, or I'll go to that place and get some unhealthy food, or I'll go and have a pastry at some bakery. And these little things they do kind of make me happy sometimes. Almost unreasonably happy, apart frpm the health impact I guess it's quite good to have these little things making you happy, I guess.
Oh, well, having a shower after discovering and being able to do anything with the spider and deciding I'd just ignore it after I'd been in about five or ten minutes. A leaf suddenly appeared on my leg and I did go, ugh! Don't really blame myself. I'm not sure where a leaf came from. Five or ten minutes after I'd been in a shower, you know, I could have picked some leaves up on the soles of my flip-flops, which I had on in the shower because I wanted to wash all my gear off after swimming. But after five or ten minutes, how the hell did that happen? was the leaf hiding in my hair somehow and finally got dislodged? I don't know but you know I did go uhhh not freak out but have a little second panic or something but semi understandable and way better than I would have done in the past.
2037 Nearly finished, but not quite finished the second beer. So that's like two and a bit pints at four and a half percent, not too insane. I'm still sitting outside, there's a little bit of a breeze getting up and it's actually quite, I'm not wearing the fleece fairly obviously to me now, but maybe not to me reading this. But it's actually quite pleasantly warm and then the breeze is just pleasantly cool. Yeah, very nice actually.
It's much lower here than in St Chris or Commetan and as that blog post mentioned it's definitely hotter and stickier here but you know in the room it's been nice even during the day out here it's quite nice it hasn't been awful it's still 600 meters which I guess helps anyway just random observations
Probably said before, as a general rule it's like the last night before you have to move somewhere else is a bit sucky and that means that single night's days are inherently a bit sucky because you don't have that, oh I've got a fairly chilled day tomorrow and I can kind of get up when I wanand j have a secure base and i will be sleepong here tomorrow night toot. Yeah it's not as simple as that because you could be staying somewhere for several days and still have a tour in the morning but you know even so there is still something about that last night thing. It's a shame to have to leave tomorrow, but I also really, even if it was cheaper and even if I hadn't more time, I don't really want to stay. If it was cheaper and I hadn't more time, I might stay for a second day here, but it would be a bit borderline even so. And since neither of those is true, you know, it's not. And it's still nice to be staying for a single night and have all the slightly weird experience of being here, even if I'd rather there wasn't a spider in the room that I can't eject because I don't have a glass. you know, not a huge deal.
First I didn't say the onsite restaurant here, while a tiny bit expensive was not actually that much more expensive than I might have expected, you know. I may even eat tomorrow, for example, at that place that I was eating in San Christ before where I got the steak and salad and stuff, 180. You know, base price was 200, maybe the San Christ place includes a free drink and you know, but the restaurant here was maybe A little pricey but not the, oh my god, ridiculous premium price because you're a captive audience that I was expecting.
2047 Finish the second beer. We'll probably have the iced bread with the coke. I'll do fucking duolingo first by way of penance.
2053 Been in to get the Diet Coke which is only slightly cool and the iced bread. I think it's actually cooler out here than inside at last so I've now left the room door open to try and exchange some more heat.
2102 For what it's worth, I kind of mostly unpacked my backpack earlier because, you know, I have a private room and I was looking for stuff like my swimming gear. I may repack it tonight, probably wait till tomorrow. There's a few like water bottles that I brought from the UK that I probably shouldn't be lugging around that are bulking it out a little bit but not too much junk really.
2111 Okay, just been in and done a bit of packing of the dry type stuff. Hopefully the swimming gear will dry off a bit overnight. Spiders still there. I guess in a way it's quite cool the way they just sit there and don't move that much. Anyway, I just wish I could get the thing out, but what are you going to do?
2119 Screen protector on the P7 is getting increasingly worse, it's bubbling up around the right hand side but hey I guess it's still protecting the screen and as long as I don't tear it it'll see the trip out and I can replace it when I get home. It's just mildly annoying. I keep kind of squeezing the bubbles out and trying to stick it back down but it keeps popping back up but maybe keeping doing it is vaguely beneficial.
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