Notable Times: Adventures in Mexico 4: Waterfall!

In this episode, we say good-bye to San Cristóbal, visit a waterfall, and drive a death-defying road to Tapachula.

Wednesday morning, December 30, 2015, we said good-bye to the nice family we had been staying with at the Lowe's house in San Cristóbal and did a little more shopping on our way out of town.

As we walked across the central square, Linette stopped to talk to one of the street vendors.

This of course attracted all of the others.

Soon there was an entire mob offering their wares. I love this picture: Kelsi's sidewards glance; the baby on the back; and the purple and other colors on the lady's shoulder. Linette ended up buying the hoodie she's holding.

The hoodie was for Jared, but it fit Linette just right, and it was slightly chilly that morning. Here we are at a bakery (panadaría) that costs a little more than some of the others, but has better stuff (according to Kelsi's experience). Sure enough, it was darn tasty, and that was our breakfast.

We also dropped by the main market again to buy a few more things. Gotta love the colors.

I think Kelsi was happy to have Erika along on the trip.

On the way back to the van we stopped by the clothing store where we had visited a member the day before. This time her husband was there, so we had a nice visit with him. (I tried to take this picture in such a way to give him a Christian halo).

Linette tried to buy a skirt in order to be nice to him, but then he gave it to her for free, and won the "being nice" game. (Heyyy!! Linette said.)

After that, we drove around town to say good-bye to a few people who we had told we would see before we left. There were lots of hugs and tears.

We said good-bye to Rafael Lopez at his shop.

Then we dropped by the Lopez family's house to hug the rest of the family.

They followed us back out to the street to say good-bye one more time. What an adorable family.

Erika, Linette, Carmen, Natan, Alín, Dulce and Kelsi.

With that, we headed out of beautiful and magical San Cristóbal de las Casas, and were off to our next adventure.

We drove down a mediocre road with frequent topes (nasty speed bumps), out in the country. It was fun to see what things looked like in the middle of nowhere.

We saw a surprising number of huge trucks filled with sticks. I'm not sure what they were doing with them.

Then we arrived at the Cascades de Chiflón, a series of waterfalls and pools around the mountain from Comitán.

The water was amazingly blue, and a lot of people were wading around in it.

We came to several different waterfalls as we walked along.

You can see a little structure above this waterfall. That's where we ended up zip-lining from!

Linette really wanted to go in the water.

Just a little further...

My biggest regret of the trip is that we didn't put our swim suits on and jump in. It was a pretty warm day and the water looked so inviting.

We didn't know if we had seen all the waterfalls yet, but I thought there was supposed to be a bigger one, so Linette and I kept going while the girls waited at the spot above.

Sure enough, not far up the trail we came across the main falls.

I had to do a panorama shot to capture the whole thing.

So we went back down to find the girls...

...and told them how close and awesome the falls were, so they went up too.

On the way back down, the girls and I went zip-lining. (Linette was still under the weather a bit and wasn't feeling up to it). That first moment when we went off of the platform and right over a tumbling waterfall was pretty awesome.

We enjoyed some quesadillas on the way back down.

We tried to go see a pyramid called Tenam Puente near Comitán, but alas, it was closed by the time we got there. On the way back to the main road we got caught behind a herd of cattle and took our time as we all meandered down the road together.

At that point, it was time to drive from Comitán to Tapachula on the road from Hades. Holy cow, it wound back and forth and back and forth and hither and yon and around and around. Here is a satellite picture of one small segment of it.

We drove for several hours on this ridiculously winding road in the dark, with a tope every minute or two. We had to speed up, swerve, swerve, and then jam on the breaks for a tope, then speed back up and go for it some more. Fortunately, nobody got carsick. And, I have to admit, it was the most exhilarating drive of my life! It was like a Disneyland ride (except, of course, one wrong move and you're dead).

The road had a tope in front of each person's house that was built along the highway, and the road also went right through various towns, such as this one.

But at long last we made it to a real freeway that went nice and straight and fast, and arrived in Tapachula at 10:30 at night, at which point we ordered some Domino's pizza from across the street, pulled the dark shades, and finally got a good, long night's sleep.

This last picture has nothing to do with our trip, except that it ended up on Kelsi's phone during it. I thought it was hilarious.