"Tuxtla Gutierrez" Mexico Travelogue by paradisedreamer

We got a night bus to Tuxtla. It was pretty nauseating as the bus twisted and turned through sharp bends over the mountains. I think it is worse at night because you can´t anticipate the direction you are going. Marc and I didn`t manage to sleep much during the 10 hour trip but Sam slept right through.
We arrived in Tuxtla at 5:30am and got a taxi to the hotel. Luckily there was someone on reception and they gave us a double room until a larger one was available. Thank goodness they didn´t make us have to wait until check-in time or charge us extra. We managed to get a few hours sleep until we changed to a nice large room with two double beds.
We went to explore town, Tuxtla is not a tourist town and there isn´t really anything to do and see. We found a nice restaurant in an arcade behind the modern cathedral and had lunch. We couldn´t find anywhere that did tours or transport to the Cañon Sumidero so we will just figure it out by taxi. We spent the afternoon in the room sleeping, it was also very hot!

We did time it very well though, this weekend was the Tuxtla 2005 Carnival. After dinner we walked around the market in the Zocalo, there was live music on a stage set up. Sam loved the bouncy castles and trampolines set up for all the kids!

A taxi to the Canyon cost us 70 pesos and it is about a 20 minute drive from town. The boats leave whenever they are full so we had to wait a little while as we were not going to squeeze onto the one in front of us. They give you life jackets and about 40 people can get on the open boats (about 100 pesos each). We managed to sit up front and it was an absolutely amazing boat trip. Once you are in the canyon the cliff walls tower a kilometer above. There are many interesting rock formations and quite a lot of bird life; egrets, herons, cormorants, vultures etc. We saw a crocodile that must have been 10 feet long, we got up close enough to get a good look at those teeth. Sam was fascinated! Toward the end of the canyon you get to Arbol de Navidad where the moss and plants have adhered to the rock face to look just like an enormous christmas tree. 30km from the start of the trip you get to the dam where the water is 260m deep, at the dam wall we saw lots of brown pelicans. On the way back we saw another crocodile sunning itself on the bank of the river as well as some spider monkeys up in the trees. The entire trip is about 2.5 hours and really worth doing.

We had a light lunch at the restaurant at the pier and managed to get the waiter to call a taxi to come and collect us (just in time before the bus loads arrived!).

During dinner we saw the parade as part of the carnival on Avenida Central. It is a major event in the town and thousands of people had turned out. A little boy bought Sam a sweet and could not take his eyes off her. He was definitely a muchacho in training, he already had the swagger and the cool stance! After the parade we took Sam to the kids area and she was pink in the face with all the exertion on the trampoline! We were the only tourists / westerners there and with Sam´s blonde hair she was turning heads and people were openly staring at her, it was weird to be the ones being looked at. There was a great spirit and we had a good night.