Extortion Fees and Tacos: Mexico Whitewater Part 2!

By Brad Sutton

Rio Agua Azul channel 3 is where I would find myself in a creek boating type of Shangri-La. The water was crystal clear with amazing class 5 whitewater over many waterfalls and through long rapids. Our group made it out just after dark and found our shuttle driver hanging out waiting for our arrival. We also hade a day on the Rio Salto de Alto another beautiful river with amazing whitewater, one rapid was nearly a mile long with must make traverses in front of gigantic hydraulics. The holes would absolutely destroy you and your kayak if you happened to fall off line through the mile long rapid. Another day lead Ben, Josh, and myself on what we thought would be a multi-day adventure on a first descent, which was the Rio Palco a tributary to the Santo Domingo. Ben had check this one out on Google Earth maps but could not get an exact detailed image of the canyon section to see if it was even possible.

This day started out with a meandering stream for 4 miles before coming to a small drop, which brought us to the main tributary. Once on the main river we paddled another 4 miles to find ourselves above a chin cave where all the rivers water would go into and disappear for at least 10 miles. So we then decided that at such an early hour in the day it might be best to just hike back out. And this is where the real adventure started, after nearly 2 and half hours of hiking up stream to the little stream we found an old gravel road and tried to hike out. When we were met by an angry mob of about 25 people all making us stop and looking through our dry bags and all through our personal belongings. One old farmer was arguing with Ben about us walking out on the road and demanded that we pay 1000 Paso’s or a 100 USD. I could not believe it this was no relaxed walk out, we had already hiked out to this point along the riverbed about 3 and half miles and was extremely tired, and wanted to just get off this road. But the mob was getting more extremely louder with their Spanish so we decide after a couple of knife signs from there buddies that it was time to pay our extortion fee and get the hell out.

This gave the mob a reason to head back to their houses and a chance for us to walk out on the road for another 4 miles with our weighted down boats of gear expecting a possible multi-day. As the trip ended our group decided that perhaps one last day of kayaking at Chilfon a beautiful travertine, pool drop type of park and huck would make us feel better about the Chiapas region for whitewater kayaking. Well this would lead us in to yet another interesting day Ben, Josh and I once again geared up and started the hike up a path, which leads you up to multiple zip lines for tourists. Ben and Josh Zip across with there kayaks and started to rappel the kayaks down when a young man with a radio became an over zealous angry employee. Josh was able to make it down and ran the first one when the young employee grabbed Ben and took his gear from his kayak as ransom so he would not run the drop. After a discussing with local park officials, we were told that we could not run the big drops through the park. At this point, I could see Ben was becoming frustrated with this and the day with the extortion fee and was not going to be denied running any other drops in the park. Therefore, we got back into the river where we agreed with park officials that it was safe to paddle down. Ben got back in and paddled up stream to a big drop, roped his boat up and seal launched in, while park officials went bonkers on there radios. It was so nice to see Ben drop another big one on this trip and felt somewhat gratified that he had gotten the goods from the trip. After this, our group went out for Tacos and fish for one of our last meals in Mexico.

What an amazing adventure I will never forget! All photos shot by Lucas Gilman. I would like to thank my sponsors for making this one happen Jackson Kayaks, Clearh20films.com, Lucasgilman.com, AT Paddles, Level Six, and FnA Head gear!

Thanks,
Brad

Hotel Charley Section

Photos by: Lucas Gilman