Our trip was to determine how the Maya navigated the canyon-bound river in the Classic period 1000 years ago, and we did……Then there is the low point: being robbed by Mexican banditos in the middle of the night.
2 E-mails and a Trip Report
I find the following trip report very interesting for reasons that have little to do with the PakCanoe that was used. For those of you who prefer the short version, I’ll include two e-mails I received from Ron Canter before his trip report was complete. That might entice you to read the rest! There will also be a more complete official report that will deal with the science in more detail.
Alv,
I recently returned from a navigation survey of the Usumacinta River on the Mexico-Guatemala border. I paddled a17′ pakcanoe borrowed from El Gemmill (who used in on his Guyana expedition). We mapped the Usu’ rapids and did some basic hydrology. Our trip was to determine how the Maya navigated the canyon-bound river in the Classic period 1000 years ago, and we did.
We found rope grooves on mooring stones where they tied their dugouts up, and one stone pillar they used to warp canoes up the rapids of Chicozapote Falls. From the stone’s location and the many deep rope grooves with their upstream orientation, the Maya canoemen tied a long rope to the stone, carried the rope down through the rapids to their canoe, got on board, and then hauled themselves and boat up through the rapids.
The Scansport canoe (Pakcanoe 170 model) performed flawlessly, running 3 foot waves and dodging the remolinos, huge whirlpools thrown up by the immense volume of water squeezed through narrow channels.
However the baggage checkers were not so kind to the boat. They failed to close the duffel properly both coming and going. A U-piece that joined one end of the gunwale tubes was lost on the way down. It was easily replaced with a piece of sturdy root and duct tape. On the way back a curved stem piece was broken, which is not so easily fudged. I would like to get replacement parts before I return the canoe to El. How much are they and how should I pay?
Thanks.
Ron Canter
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Alv,
It will be a week or two before I do a brief trip report covering the high points: finding Maya moorings from 1000 years ago, climbing to the top of Yaxchilan to see the split sky, descending into Pacal’s tomb at Palenque, going inside Budsilha Falls, running the rapids, and meeting lots of great people at Pan Chan and on the trip. Then there’s the low point: being robbed by Mexican banditos in the middle of the night. I’ll send a copy when it’s done. You will be more than welcome to include it in the web site etc..
Thanks,
Ron
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USUMACINTA RIVER REPORT from March 25-April 6, 2004:
First, the low point. On our second night on the river, at about 3:30 AM, Mexican banditos came down from the hills and robbed us. One had a gun; the rest machetes. They rather haphazardly took money and valuables. Dave, Tammy, and others lost much money, equipment, and clothes. Only Dave lost his passport. I was relieved of my camera, some cash, a GPS unit, and all clothes except those I had on my back. Craig, our videographer, was very lucky and lost next to nothing. But worst of all, they stole our beer, the stinking bandits.
The place where we were robbed is called Ojo de Agua and is next to the Anaite I site on the Mexican shore, at a right hand bend 5 km below the Tower Guard Station in Guatemala. Dave camped there last year without incident. We would have preferred to go farther but were running out of daylight and really had no other choice. We later found out that mojados had been robbed there, but we were the first raft group so honored. The whole group was shaken but soon bounced back. The raft guides and Tammy’s clients were great people to do a mentally tough trip with.
I only missed the pictures that I lost. The rest was just stuff.
Aside from the robbery, the river was all I hoped for and more. For me, going down into Pacal’s tomb at Palenque with rafters Ryan and Cynthia was one of the high points. At Yaxchilan several of us climbed to the top of Temple 41 and saw the Split Sky, a cleft in the Sierra del Lacandon where the sun rises on summer solstice. Lots of spider monkeys there too. Spent some time deciphering various glyphs on lintels.
There were ten of us in three rafts, one folding canoe, and one ducky. We found and mapped mooring stones, first at Yaxchilan, and then at many other places along the shore. They are rocks deeply grooved from boat ropes cinched around them for a long time. They turned out to be good diagnostics for which coves and harbors were well used in the past. We mapped all the rapids, but it will be a little while before I can get the map set updated.
After the robo we blew off the hydrology for a day to move fast and far down the river. Dried and sorted all the gear on “Playa Mojados” at the head of Chicozapote Falls (Class 2), where we discovered a stone pillar grooved all over from past ropes. It gave a clue to how the Maya may have surmounted the rapids. It is in line with the center of the rapids and could have been used to warp boats up. They would have tied a long rope to it, carried the end down to their canoe, and then hauled in the rope. I ran all the rapids OK in my 17′ Pakcanoe but flipped and swam in a modest whirlpool near Arroyo Jerusalem. Got careless. Also got water in the clinometer, so we couldn’t do any bankfull-level surveys for three days. The hardest rapid in the canoe was not Class 2-3 Cola del Diablo, with its 1 meter waves, but Raudal de Piedras Negras (also Class 2-3), with breaking waves and monstrous remolinos. The Pakcanoe was stable enough to cut through smaller remolinos (whirlpools) and nimble enough to dodge the big ones, some as wide as the boat was long. The canoe was an essential research tool, used to investigate how the Maya negotiated these same rapids 1000 years before.
We camped at a safe beach on the Guatemalan shore in the middle of a gorge above Desempeno. The next day, at El Porvenir, the defensore rangers were great to us, can’t say enough about them. Some are former guerrilla fighters, and all good guys.
From all the ancient moorings it is clear that the bay at El Porvenir was one of the Maya’s great ports, where they ended a long carry from the lowlands up past the canyons. At Piedras Negras we climbed to the top of the Acropolis to visit the grave of Tatiana Proskouriakoff, who broke J. Eric S. Thompson’s grip on Maya archaeology. She started the process of recovering the real history of the Maya and deserves to be buried with their kings and queens.
Dave called out on the satellite phone at El P. and added to the resupply that Willy Fonseca was bringing to us at Budsilha (Butzijah). Two nights at Budsilha Falls gave time to do some catchup on the hydrology and to unwind.
Dave showed a couple of us how to swim down the river to the foot of the falls, climb up the left side, and duck through the liquid curtain onto a ledge behind, a definite scenery high point. More mooring stones at Budsilha.
Craig’s ducky flipped in the first rapid below Budsilha but no harm. We nearly overshot the mouth of the Rio Chocolha and had to line one raft back up, not easy on rocks sharp as a surform file. Good campsite downstream below a huge balanced rock, a landmark at the entrance to Iguanas Canyon, which is what the upper canyon is called. At the Chocolha, Craig and I folded up our solo boats and stowed them on the rafts. We rode through the Class 3 rapids on the big boys. Canyon runs were uneventful amid soaring cliffs. Back at wild Pan Chan, Alonso Mendez and Manuel Oca took us castaways in.
It was a successful and great trip in spite of it all.
Ron Canter
4-15-04
