Shortly after getting settled in Jalcomulco, Veracruz, we were visited by some fellow travelers we met on the La Paz - Mazatlán ferry. We had spent a few hours talking up Jalcomulco to James and Kelly (and their dog Orion and van Wendy) while we were waiting to board the ship in Baja, and learned that they are also boaters and were packing an inflatable tandem kayak on the roof of their van. James had been a guide on the Cache la Poudre River in Colorado, and Kelly is a whitewater enthusiast, so we figured they would be right at home in Jalcomulco, and an open ended offer was tendered there on the ferry: come find us, and we will go boating.

We had parted ways upon departing the ferry, and they had gone south towards the surf town Sayulita as we climbed towards Durango, putting their schedule a few days behind ours. This ended up being perfect, as we felt ready to extend our limited knowledge of the town by the time they arrived - we had re-established our connections with some locals, I had been down the river a few times, and we could try to play-act as guides for visitors. I was toying around with the idea of “guiding” them down the river in their ducky for their first lap of the Pescados section, the class III-IV canyon just above town, but I wasn’t sure enough of the lines yet to take the responsibility for another set of paddlers. We decided on renting a raft and hiring a local guide to give James, Kelly, and Chelsea a look at the canyon before we turned up the dial on adventure.

Our guide for the day was Jose, a professional boater and a significant figure in the Jalcomulco whitewater scene. He has been paddling in the area for decades, but more importantly, he was one of a handful of prominent faces in an otherwise headless and grassroots movement to stop the building of a dam just upstream from Jalcomulco. We had heard that in the past there were plans to dam the Rio Antigua for all the normal reasons like flood control, irrigation, hydropower, but we had assumed that plan was a product of the 1970’s or maybe 80’s. We were surprised to learn the fight had only recently ended (if those kinds of fights ever really end). More information can be found here: https://roarmag.org/films/the-river-says-no/.

My limited ability to write creatively escapes me when I am confronted with communicating honest emotions about powerful moments: Having Jose as our guide was really cool.

Having the trip outfitted by our friends at Kachikín rafting was great. The weather was nearly perfect, the river level low-ish but playful. James, Kelly and Chelsea got surfed in holes and waves, Jose pointed out pictographs and caves and wildlife, and I clapped and cheered and tried not to swim. It was a great start of what became a week of adventure for us and our ferry friends, and the lap down Pescados left everyone wanting more, which was exactly how I’d planned it.

Kelly, James, Jose, and Christian getting ready to launch at Puente Pescados, the bridge that marks the start of the Pescados section of the Rio Antigua.

The last moments of dry warmth before leaving the ready eddy.

The view downstream on an especially clear day in the Pescados canyon.

Our guide Jose offering stories of the canyon; white pictographs can be seen on the stone wall above him in the center of the photo.

Jose showing where the high water mark is on a wall of the canyon, just beneath the rapid “Cueva”

Paddling beneath “Cueva” rapid, one of the prettiest parts of the canyon.

We had globbed onto an existing commercial trip, so it was a bit of a party with two rafts and three kayaks.

Safety Kayaker Roberto took good care of us, and even gave me some pointers on paddling my packraft.

James getting inverted at the jump rock.

Timid Tuttle barely surviving the jump rock.

Jose is a local who knows everyone - he saw some friends checking shrimp and *langostino* (crawdad) traps on the side of the river and used it as an excuse to teach a lesson on the natural history of the Rio Antigua.

A complete success of a trip, back in downtown Jalcomulco.

November 20th brought Revolution Day for Mexico, with Jalcomulco hosting a proper parade like so many other towns and cities in the country. We met up with Oscar that morning, freshly home from leading a six day kayaking tour around eastern Mexico. The town had turned out to the square, for a few rousing speeches from the local politicians, a presentation of the Mexican flag by the color guard, and then a town-encircling parade made up of students and clubs from the local schools. Many of the locals dressed up in revolutionary garb, and even the little kids in grade school were outfitted in bandoliers and carried cardboard rifles to celebrate the armed uprising of the Mexican people. One of Oscar’s children was marching with her high school, giving Chelsea a great excuse to bust out the camera and do her photo-journalist thing.

This is about 1/4 of the crowd gathered in the town square, It seemed like every school child marched in the parade, from the high school marching band to the primary school students.

Our close friend Oscar Colorado dressed up for Revolution Day.

The Revolution Day costumes were excellent!

Jalcomulco is a town BURSTING with spirit.

After getting a taste of the local whitewater, James and Kelly were keen to unpack their tandem inflatable kayak, or “ducky”, and get to paddling on their own. I know this feeling, or rather these feelings; there is a great desire to use the gear you have hauled all over creation, and there is an equally great desire to throw off the assistance of a guide and become the master of one’s own whitewater destiny - to exit the raft and get into a kayak, or in this case a ducky, actually a double ducky, or as some refer to it, a divorce boat, due to its tendencies to spark fights between paddlers if things don’t go well.

The section beneath Jalcomulco is a fun, friendly class II-III adventure, with a couple named rapids and a take-out only an hour downstream at the town of Apazapan. We talked Oscar into coming with us and launched from our backyard, with James and Kelly having paddled down from their riverfront camp just a few hundred meters upstream. This was the first I had seen of them in their ducky, and they handled the section just fine, as had Chelsea in her packraft. With that fun bit of success behind us, Oscar proposed the next step on our whitewater skills ladder: a trip to the Actopan River.

Chelsea and I (and Gracie!) had paddled the Actopan two years prior, and its one of those experiences we gush about. The river pops right out of a cliff wall, completely spring fed and crystal clear, then drops over a few sporty class III drops, and then winds its way through sugar cane fields and bamboo groves, with more class II splashy fun all the way down. We had promised a great time to James and Kelly, and neither the river nor Oscar failed to deliver. The rapids were a blast, the ducky handled everything beautifully, and we all enjoyed a long surf session at the end that convinced me James and Kelly could paddle the Pescados if they wanted.

Our only photo from our Apazapan warm-up lap, loaded up in the shuttle, riding the 10 minutes back to Jalcomulco.

Getting ready for a lap down the Actopan river. The parking is above the springs at a butterfly santuary, and there is a short walk down into the canyon.

Some of the butterflies at the sanctuary feasting on ripened fruit.

Navigating the slick steel walkways to the put-in is a challenge. The springs cover everything in a clean mist and there is slippery vegetation everywhere.

The entrance and descent into the river corridor and springs is always an impressively beautiful sight.

Paddling through the busy waters of the Actopan.

The first few kilometers of the ActoPan are non-stop class II fun!

More waterfalls, I assume from the same geological seam as the springs at the put-in, dumping water into the river channel.

The waterfalls are the first best place to regroup after the put-in.

This is the tempo and the speed of the first half of the Actopan - it is smile inducing fun!

Thanksgiving 2024 would probably have gone by unnoticed by the Traveling Tuttles if not for our ferry friends - it’s easy to let major holidays slip by unnoticed if your surrounding community and local culture don’t partake in the celebration. But with friends from the US visiting, we had to do something to commemorate the day. There was a hot spring attraction located a few towns downstream we had been meaning to visit since our last trip through Jalcomulco, and the presence of “guests” made for the perfect excuse to go explore its offerings. We carpooled in James and Kelly’s van Wendy, with Orion the dog reluctantly making room for us on the bed, and headed off for another aquatic adventure.

In the town of El Carrizal we found a sprawling, multiple pool resort, complete with restaurants, bars, masseuses, ropes courses, and water slides. We started with a long soak in the hot pool, a natural bath complete with a sandy floor, varying depths, and algae coated ropes crisscrossing the deep section, to allow the swimming challenged to bathe in security. The river runs right past the pool, with its cool waters lapping at the concrete bank of the hot spring. The water is healthful, or at least it is pungent with high concentrations of sulfur and salt that must do something for you. The soak was relaxing, the pool far from crowded. Once we were too warm, we explored the rest of the resort with timid reluctance - James and Kelly are a lot like us, in that they take their cues from the locals around them, and no one was swimming or playing in the cool pools or at the water slides. The cool pools were nice, probably empty due to the weather being a little overcast and it being a weekday, but the real fun was discovering that what we thought were ornamental bridges were actually hand made, tile covered water slides! We couldn’t believe it, and we explored the idea as a group, like a bunch of penguins peering over the edge of an iceberg, looking for danger in the waters below. The pool seemed quite shallow, and the slide was really steep, almost guaranteeing a swimmer would strike the bottom of the pool coming off a slide. James volunteered to go first, and after a successful slide into the shallow pool, we all followed suit, slapping the bottom of the pool every time, risk management be darned! It was a giggle fest, how could it not be?

With our confidence sky high from a positive exploration of the hand tiled slides, we walked back out to the vans, and past the soaring, handmade concrete water slides we had seen on the way in. The structure was at least 30 feet tall, vaguely dragon themed, with four slides spurring off the main tower. Its pools were vacant, as they had been on our way in, and we had written it off as a kiddy pool, sure that the dangerously steep slides weren’t actually for guests. But now we knew that our idea of dangerously steep only counted for something in the states, and that vacant pools didn’t mean anything was closed, just that other bathers weren’t interested in taking childish risks for childish rewards. Kelly, our best Spanish speaker, asked the attendants to turn on the pumps, and we were in business! At least for the lower slides, the upper two only got activated on the weekends, when demand was high enough to justify the electric bill. It was, again, a giggle fest.

Incredibly thankful for hot springs and questionable water slides, we headed back to Jalcomulco and tried to get a little more traditional. Kelly and James had been staying a few streets down at a small guesthouse, and they had the place to themselves, complete with an outdoor kitchen and deck perched over the river. We brought the ingredients for stuffing, they had some chicken and potatoes, and everyone had a nice time, dogs included! Cooking over a fire was an adventure like it always is, but the property had built their grill with a cable adjustment for different cooking heights, making it easy to Respect the Chicken. The whole meal was a nice Mexican nod to an American tradition, and little was missing from the table, or at least we thought so.

Lounging in the deep end of the hot springs at El Carrizal.

The spring is clear but has a lot of calcium and salt and sulfur - if it wasn’t for the high volume of flow through the pool I think the water would be full of algae.

The rio Antigua runs right past the springs, allowing for a cool soak if you want it, and you can see the volume of outflow from the hot pool on the right side of the photo.

Team swim! Enjoying the hand made, hand tiled water slide. Its some of the smoothest tile work we have ever seen!

The hand made concrete dragon waterslide

The artisanal nature of the waterslides was incredibly impressive. everything was hand poured and hand shaped around rebar and chicken wire.

Being ejected from the dragon’s mouth into a suspiciously shallow pool.

Chelsea was hesitant at first, but this was the kind of adventure that didn’t take no for an answer, especially on Thanksgiving

Trying our hardest to respect the chicken.

Enjoying the outdoor kitchen and dinig area at James’ and Kelly’S guesthouse.

“the humans wouldn’t let us go down the water slides and now they are making us take silly photos, no fair!” - Orion and Gracie.

The next day we worked up the gumption to take the ducky down the Pescados section, jumping onto a trip with the guys from Kachikín. Chelsea stayed behind to take photos of us at the last rapid, as she was still nursing her healing back injury and not totally comfortable paddling the Pescados section in her packraft. James and Kelly only had one swim in the canyon, in La Cueva, the rapid that is probably the hardest move at low water due to a handful of opposing seams and holes above a small drop - it was one of two places that had me a little concerned for them. The other spot of concern in my opinion is Huevo rapid, where the biggest risk is a nasty recirculating hole at the bottom. I told James and Kelly they could run left of the hole on the chicken line, or try the tighter raft line to the right of the hole. They ignored me and listened to the locals who were goading them on to run straight over the middle of the boulder that creates the hole, a meaty line that makes your boat splat on the water below the hole if you do it right, and an ugly swim if you don’t. They nailed the line, their double duck making a satisfying “BOOF” as it landed under the hole, cheered on by the hoots and hollers of the local guys in their kayaks. I don’t know why I had been so worried to take them down the Pescados - they are overlanders, adventure is what they do.

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Nov 14 - Nov 25 : Ferry Friends, Mexican Revolution Day and Thanksgiving

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