(Myself on the 2nd falls of the Santo Domingo) photo Derik Beitler
Paddling out of the country is always an adventure, and this trip was no exception. Chiapas has a reputation for being a little dangerous and we found out why.
Ben Stookesbury Brad Sutton and I tried to do a first decent of this massive gorge next to the Santo Domingo river. We paddled a tributary for about 6 miles through little villages and then got to the main canyon. We made it about 2 miles down stream in the canyon and the whole river went under ground.
I guess we should have known, because you couldn’t see the river bed on google earth, only the canyon. That’s when the fun began!
We had to work our way back up stream to what we thought was a friendly village.
All was going well until someone in a house on the hill got on the megaphone and told us we had to go to their house. We were all a little sketched out so we tried to leave. Every man and boy in the village followed us and surrounded us. They basically held us hostage, trying to make us pay them 100 US dollars for trespassing. We wouldn’t pay so they started making motions like carving up an animal and slitting our throats. At this point we decided to try to defuse the situation by paying up and they let us leave peacefully. It was another couple hours back to the road from there.
good times!
The rest of the trip was amazing. We had a chance to go back to my favorite river in the world, the Santo Domingo. We also paddled the classic Aqua Azul as well as many other first decents.
Our whole trip can can be seen next month with the premier of “Hotel Charlie Volume 2”
Coming out the bottom of a big time slide on the Santo(photo Brad Sutton)
Zip lining over El Chiflone to the put in on the other side.
Another Horizon line on the Agua Azul
(photo Brad Sutton)
local paddles