Swimming in the Rain…

We bought Moby our 2000 4x4 diesel Ford Excursion, specifically for this trip.  It is big enough for us and our dogs to sleep in, better fuel economy (they say with a diesel), and it is “Ford Tough” for bad roads.  With that in mind we set off to Sumec Champey on a “short cut” about 2/3rds the distance than if we back tracked through Coban, but 50 kilometers of dirt roads, followed by 20 kilometers of dirt roads.  Our load is so heavy that we broke our drag arm in Baja and had that repaired as well as the shocks beefed up in Oaxaca, but still Fritz was tentative to test the work.  I would say that we were slow and careful on the road but the truth of the matter is that we crawled the 70 kilometer to Sumec Champey, it took us about 6 hours to get there, but as we had left at 6 AM that was still early.

We found a cute little hostel to stay about 2 kilometer outside of the park, unloaded had a sandwich and figured we check it out and decide if we would spend one day or two after a swim in the pools.  During the last 20 minutes of driving to the pools we saw the ugliest green river I have seen yet.  I was super disappointed that all that I had read about Sumec Champey and the crystal blue pools and lovely waterfalls was not living up to the green gunk that I was seeing, maybe everyone else had come during the rainy season and during the dry season it wasn’t as nice.  Feeling the same sinking feeling that had been gnawing on us since Guate, we got to the park to be informed once again that no dogs were allowed in.  We didn’t think that we would be there that long, so we let the dogs out in the parking lot and decided to park in the shade, roll down the windows and check it out.  It was one of our better decisions.

There are six pools in all at the park, each feeds down to the other, there is also a hike that goes up and around the park so you can see the pools from above, not wanting to leave the dogs that long we skipped the hike and headed straight to the pools.  The pools are blue, and clear, and absolutely lovely.  We swam in the lowest one then climbed up to the second one.  After checking on the dogs, making sure they were fine, and having a couple of cervezas, it started to rain, rather than packing it all in we went swimming again and then called it a day.

That night at the hostel we were treated to wonderful light show by Mother Nature, though this time we didn’t get a mini tornado and hail we got at least 6 hours of lightening, thunder and rain, a wonderful treat!

The drive out the next morning was different; Fritz finally found his 4 wheel drive skills.  I am not sure if it was the great swim, the pouring rain, checking on the truck and finding everything ok or getting passed by tour buses loaded with luggage and stuffed with people but the drive out took less than half the time as the drive in, and that’s a good thing.