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By John McConville

Hola Me Amigo’s!!! So here I am, reporting live from the warm waters of Mexico. Where the waterfall are big and the travertine is sticky. Currently i’m located in Ciudad Valles at Aventura Huasteca where Lance Reif, Chris Bear, Aaron Koch, and myself have been running some of the local rivers.

Mexican whitewater is unlike anything i’ve ever paddled on before. The river bed is made up of something called Travertine. Travertine is formed from water that’s high in calcium, it builds up on anything in the water… trees, rocks, lost paddles…exc As a result it makes really sticky pool drop waterfalls and slides that are over hung. interesting and fun…

The Mico’s is the local classic with a really big waterfall at the put in. Its called "El Toro"… Story is it got its name back in the day when the spaniards used the top of the waterfall as a land bridge to get there silver across to the other side. When the spaniards heard that the banditos were coming to steal there silver they pushed the bulls over the edge and into the pool below. So legend is there’s still a bunch of silver and the bottom of the waterfall. In either case neat story and big waterfall. Chris Bear was the only person in our group to fire it up. He had a pretty big hit at the bottom landing stern first but managed to still paddle away. Finishing off the rest of the Mico’s is like a whitewater creeker’s play park, lots of travertine slides and waterfalls.

My favorite run so far has been the Rio Verde. Our day on the Verde started off with a Mexican local equipped with an orange and a gun showing us down to the river. Extremely nice guy, he shared his orange and gave us great bata about the class 5 billy goat path that would later get us around the 100 foot waterfall. Putting on the Verde the first rapid we came to was a 40 foot waterfall, followed by a 15, and then another 15 footer. Sweet first gorge! Cursing down after that were bunch of fun bolder gardens and 10 foot drops leading up to Cascade Llovinosa. The 100 foot waterfall, and no it doesn’t look good to go, but it sure is beautiful. After that you have a few more bolder gardens and a rather long but scenic paddle out.

Amazing places, great people, and warm waters… Ciudad Valles has provided us with a great boating and a good starting point for us on our trip to Mexico. Many thanks to Arron Koch, Margie, and Adventura Huasteca for the place to stay and good local bata. Tomorrow morning we head South to Veracruz in hopes to find good water on the Alseseca…

Live from Mexico,

John McConville

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