Catemaco and Los Tuxtlas

Our next stop (not including a night spent in the shadow of Orizaba), was the town of Catemaco, in the mountainous, coastal, and jungle filled biosphere of Los Tuxtlas. Most people approach Catemaco from the north or south on Mex 180; it is a winding free road but is in good condition and is widely used as an alternative to the expensive toll road. As we were approaching from the west, we jumped between the 145d toll road and the 180 free road using a road marked on my map as the 179. With the possible exception of toll roads, it is very difficult to judge the size or condition of a road in Mexico based on its grading on a map, and the 179 was no exception. It appeared on the map to be just like any other local road, and so I had anticipated it be in reasonably poor condition, with lots of topes and lots of potholes. Some sections roughly fitted this description, but others were far worse. There was one section more than a mile long, where the tarmac had completely disappeared and had left rutted, corrugated mud, far worse than the graded gravel sections that covered other parts of the road. As is often the case, the last 50 miles of the journey took us longer than the first 150.

Catemaco itself was a little disappointing, and is not really the best place to explore the biosphere from. I could have done without the day that we spent there, but I did enjoy having a cold beer at La Panga bar, which is on stilts a fair way out into the beautiful Lake Catemaco, accessed by a boardwalk. I say I enjoyed a beer, but really I didn’t enjoy it at all. Certainly I enjoyed sitting in such beautiful surroundings, but I ordered what I thought would be another domestic beer form the beer menu, called Michelada. I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything that I’ve eaten and drunk in Mexico and so I enjoy ordering from the list of items on a menu which I don’t recognise. This usually means that I get to eat or drink something tasty and interesting which I’ve not had before, sadly this time it backfired. It turns out that a Michelda is not a brand of beer at all, but a Mexican beer based cocktail, no doubt a novice tourist mistake. I’m not sure exactly what was in but it seemed to be a mixture of beer, lime juice, tabasco sauce and lots of salt, poured over ice. Given that it is on most drinks menus I’m sure that it is popular, and that many people like it, but to me it was disgusting. What I wanted was a refreshing beer, and what I got was a watery, salty, spicy broth that tasted like the water left after washing a pan that you’ve made paella in.

The friendly and helpful owner at the Tepetepan campsite in Catemaco gave us a few suggestions of places to visit in the surrounding area, and a map showing where they all are. A lot of the villages and attractions are too small to feature on Streets and Trips, most of the roads didn’t feature either, no doubt as the driver of the car sent out to map the remote roads reached the end of his tether with the rough unpaved surfaces. There is a road leading from Catemaco, about 30km or so to the nearby stretch of the Gulf Coast. There are small fishing villages stretching for a long way north along the coast, but we were told that that they are all similar and all have nice beaches and plenty of places to park. Being naturally lazy, we chose the first of the villages, called Jicacal, which we had been told had a reasonable road accessing it.
I expect that the owner of the campsite who told us that the road to Jicacal was large enough for coaches, either misremembered the road, or was perhaps thinking about a different access road off the route to La Barra. There is of course the possibility that he just didn’t like us but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. As soon as we turned down the road we knew that it was completely unsuited for a heavy truck. 10m onto the track and it was already too narrow and too steep; it would have been fine in a small 4x4 or even a car but not in a big truck. Reversing back up the track got me almost to the main road before one of the wheels lost traction and we stopped moving in a cloud of foul smelling tyre smoke, terrifying a poor women and her children who were waiting behind the truck having just got off a collectivo (rural pickup truck based bus service).

All road going vehicles have an open differential in the back axle which lets the tyres roll at different speeds to account for the different radiuses that the wheels travel at when going around a corner. One of the side effects of an open differential is that when one wheel loses traction on a surface, all of the power goes to that wheel, making it spin uselessly whilst the other wheel which may be on more solid ground sits motionless. On race vehicle this can happen when cornering too fast, although on most vehicles, the only time it will happen is on very soft surfaces such as wet mud or sand, or when going up a steep incline. In our case it was the latter. The differential-lock forces power to be split evenly between both wheels and forces them to move at the same speed. This is extremely useful for getting out of situations with poor traction but makes going in anything other than a straight line very difficult and potentially damaging. On one occasion I forgot to disengage the diff lock after getting back onto to tarmac and immediately tore a huge gauge into the tarmac as one set of wheels on the back axle dragged across the road with several tonnes of weight on them.

Like the hand winch I packed in Jim’s boot, the differential lock is one of those things that I hoped I’d not need, but when the time came to use it I was extremely grateful that it was there. I twisted the air operated switch in the cab and the thankfully the traction on the other wheel was enough to allow us to heave back onto the road. The track was too small and steep to get any kind of run up, and so without the diff lock we’d have been in trouble here. The hand winch would probably have helped, using the multitude of trees on the other side of the road to anchor to, but the passing vehicles would not have appreciated having the wire rope blocking the road for an eternity as I inched the truck up the hill a fraction of an inch with each pump of the puller. I’ve no idea what Brinks thought their delivery truck would need a locking rear differential for, it’s normally only put on construction vehicles, but I’m grateful that they specified it as an optional extra on J118.

Once we were back on the road, we continued to the next town of Balzapote. I’ve no idea whether Jicacal would have been different, but Balzapote was exactly what we were hoping for, a tiny village with a good beach, and no kiosks selling tat. A friendly house owner at the end of the road, allowed us to park outside his house, meters from the beach. For the whole day and the following morning we had the beach to ourselves and we spent the time relaxing, walking Boris, and enjoying the site of the forest covered mountains dropping into the sea.

The following morning, the man whose house we’d parked outside seemed disappointed that we were leaving so soon, but was certainly happy with the beers that we gave him to say thanks. We drove back down the road we’d arrived on, to the town of Sontecomapan on the laguna which brings the sea several miles inland towards Catemaco. For 600 Pesos (less than £30) we had a boat and driver to ourselves for most of the day, riding up rivers, and across the laguna to La Barra, the town at the spit of land where the laguna meets the sea. We had a fantastic fish lunch on the beach, and spent the end of the day swimming on our own in the pool at a beautiful waterfall near to Sontecompapan. During the day the carpark at the boat launch in Sontecomapan was full of launcheros (boat drivers) and people enjoying food or drinks at the multitude of bars and restaurants surrounding it; by the evening it was deserted, and we spent the night there with nobody about.

The following day we drove back to Lake Catemaco, but instead of going back to the town we continued clockwise around the lake, headed to the far side of the lake, near to where the road ends, to visit a waterfall and pool called Poza Reyna. The roads in the area are generally acceptable, but as we got farther around the lake the road got worse and worse. By the time we got to the turnoff for Poza Reyna we were travelling at less than 10km/h with the tarmac left several miles behind us. The side road to the waterfalls started well, being in better condition than the main road that we’d left behind, but after about a mile we came to a tree that had fallen into the road, preventing anything wider than a pickup truck from passing. If I’d been sure that the remainder of the road was passable I’d have got the bow saw and axe out and started clearing the road, but the tree has clearly been in the road for some time, and was an indication that nothing as big as Jim ever uses the route. I didn’t want to get stuck further down the 5 mile road, having to reverse even further, and so not being able to turn around, I reversed a mile back the way we’d come. I know a few posts ago I was moaning about the high ratio of reverse gear, but in this post I’ll express how thankful I was not to have to crawl a mile backwards at a snails pace.

None of the collectivos go as far as Poza Reina from what we could tell, there is only one very small town on the road beyond the turnoff, and so we gave up on the plan and headed back to Catemaco to join the 180 and continue on our journey east. I’m sure that we could have got a taxi from Catemaco and back, but being aware that we would soon be in Chiapas at Agua Azul, possibly the most impressive waterfall in Mexico, it was not worth fretting over a small local attraction.