TRAVEL

Travel and tribulations
Adventure in HIERVE EL AGUA
By Nancy Seeley

About two hours southeast of Oaxaca City lies one of the most uncommon natural wonders Mexico has to offer. Called Hierve el Agua (Boiling Water), the site features two petrified waterfalls descending more than 150 feet over a pair of steep cliffs. The calcified structures were formed thousands of years ago by dripping carbonated water, and the mineral springs which fed them are still bubbling away today. These springs formed part of a unique pre-Hispanic irrigation system dating back to 1300 B.C. which archaeologists continue to study in the 21st century.

The brochures we read made Hierve el Agua sound like a must-see, so after visiting the ruins at Mitla one day with an Arkansas couple we'd met on our travels, the four of us hired a pickup truck masquerading as a taxi and continued up to 5,800 feet for a first-hand look at the fossilized cliffs. The narrow, tortuous road looked more like a goat trail, swerved back and forth at a dizzying rate and had no shoulders or guard rails, causing my new friend Samantha to spend much of the journey with her head buried behind my back. Our driver Luis kept telling us not to worry because he'd driven this route many times and considered it his own personal "autopista."

Nevertheless, it was frightening to contemplate what would happen if someone approached from the other direction. There DEFINITELY was not enough room for two vehicles to squeeze by each other.

Thankfully, we made it, and once we got there, we were awed by Mother Nature's power. We were atop one waterfall, standing in an area known as the amphitheater, which was speckled with shallow pools of bubbly mineral water. (The water fluctuates between about 71 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit, but the constant effervescence makes it look like it's boiling.) A short distance away, the springs have created a much larger pool used as a natural spa. You can stay overnight in well-equipped cabins and choose from several small restaurants if you really want to get into the spirit of the trip. Our vantage point also afforded an excellent view of the second crusty-looking cascade, which resembled a giant stalactite hanging in the midst of lush mountain greenery. If you only looked at its top portion, you could imagine some giant's beer mug overflowing with foaming amber liquid. If you took in the entire visual panorama, you could see for about 20 miles.

After only 10 minutes on our heavenly perch, thunder started rumbling in the distance. The skies started darkening ominously, even though it was only 3:30 p.m. Time to go, we figured, hurrying back to Luis's waiting vehicle. We piled into the crew cab, but barely had we seated ourselves when big, fat drops of rain started splashing the windshield. Then another passenger crowded into the front seat. Shortly afterwards a local teacher hopped on board in back with a friend for the ride down the rutted stone and dirt mountain "road."

The weather worsened rapidly, and good-hearted Luis couldn't refuse the frantic waves of others who wanted to join the growing numbers in the covered (but not enclosed) rear bed of the truck. Within minutes, a torrential cloudburst obliterated sight, created instantaneous "mudfalls" down the mountain slopes, and threatened to dislodge boulders in our path. Samantha and I begged Luis to stop and wait it out, but he calmly insisted it would be even worse if we didn't soldier on. The defroster didn't work, so the fellow next to Luis kept cleaning the windshield so at least a scrap of road was visible during the many hairpin turns and switchbacks. By this time, Samantha's nails were digging into my arm while she whimpered. My partner Nick, outwardly calm, said later he was a bit worried about falling rocks pushing us off the road - plus the one crack of thunder which was SO loud the car actually shook! During a fleeting moment of rational thought, I felt it peculiar that none of the guidebooks said this trip might not be for the faint of heart.

Having said all this, we had it MUCH better than the passengers standing behind us. There were no seats back there, so they had to grip metal bars for support, transforming them rather smartly into human lightning rods. (This was scary stuff, ranking right up there with the time in the Canary Islands when I was heading up Tenerife's Mt. Teide, the weather turned bad, and the bus driver jumped off the bus. As Dave Barry would say: I am not making this up!)

Forty very long minutes after we started, we reached the bottom of the mountain. Shaking and spent, I asked Luis if he'd ever driven in anything remotely similar to these conditions in his three years of traversing the mountain at least twice a day with tourists. "No," he admitted, adding that he replaces the truck's brakes once a month and spends quite a pile on tires as well.

Ahhh...but there's more to the story, which the enterprising Luis never told us till we were on terra firma. It turns out that the much safer, wider, well-established road leading from the valley floor directly to Hierve el Agua was closed that day due to a contentious struggle between local villages over ownership of the site. The battle, we learned later, has been going on for years. Rather than lose the tourism, an alternative access route was hacked out around the other side of the mountain, and that primitive path was what we were traversing on our trepidation-ful ascent and carnival ride descent. The local tour companies in Oaxaca would NEVER have gone this way, and we probably wouldn't have either if we'd been fully informed at the outset.

Anyway, the place is definitely worth seeing, but do verify the route you'll be taking before getting underway. It could save you a bout of high blood pressure and a few gray hairs in the long run.

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