Chiflon and Los Lagos de Montebello

Well, for my second weekend in San Cristobal, I headed out to visit Chiflon, which is a park with beautiful waterfalls.  As you can tell from the pictures, it was a beautiful place.  I had my raincoat on because I started to get really wet as I got closer to the waterfall.  The trail ended at a platform that sits in the middle of a heavy mist. I walked up to the top of the stairs, but I didn't stay on the platform very long.  My pants were completely drenched in about 5 seconds.  I decided to head down as those were my only clothes for the day and Chiflon was our first stop.  I am thankful to have lived in Oregon because I am well trained for walking around wet.  The mist from the waterfall definitely surpassed the rain storms in Cannon Beach.  The good news, I dried off in about an hour.  Once I hiked back down from the waterfall, it was warm and a bit humid.  Perfect conditions to dry off in.  I was ready to get in the van and head off to Los Lagos de Montebello.

The lakes were about an hour from Chiflon.  There is a park that contains over 50 beautiful lakes of different colors.  We were only able to see five of them as we had a 2 hours there. Our travel group was made up of 13 people.  Seven of us were from the US, and the other six were from Mexico.  While we were at the lakes, I ate lunch with college kids from Georgia. They had brought along PB & J and were kind enough to feed me.   My favorite part of the day though was talking to a Mexican woman and her daughter.  It was very encouraging.  It is tempting to spend time with the tourists that speak English, but on this particular tour, it worked out to spend more time with the Spanish speakers.  I thought she was a teacher at first because she was very patient and spoke very clearly.  She encouraged me to keep practicing and that I was off to a good start.  At our last lake, you could see the border of Guatemala and Mexico.  So in the mountains behind me and my patient friend, you can see Guatemala.  I thought that was pretty cool.