Un Oasis a su alcance  (An Oasis at your fingertips)

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     Waking up on a Saturday morning at 4:30 AM is usually not the best way to start a weekend but in this case, that couldn’t be more wrong. After the early rising, we started heading to Tolantongo, Hidalgo for the weekend. Tolantongo is a box canyon semi- desert zone, surrounded by rock formations carved by water flow and geological pressures.  Tolantongo comes from the Nahuatl word Tonaltonko meaning place where the little heat is felt. After a four hour ride of mostly sleeping and listening to my ipod, we pulled into a parking lot at the top of a valley, overlooking a river and mountains on all sides. We immediately met our tour guides who got us situated in two busses where we headed down into the valley. We ended up at a restaurant that overlooked the river and surrounding areas. All of our meals on this trip were buffets and nothing stuck out as super good but it was definitely better than what I get at a typical Chinese buffet. After breakfast we changed into our swimming suits and headed to the glorias (see pictures), waterfalls, and grottos. We hiked to La Gloria Hidalgo first, which was a twelve feet deep natural swimming area, surrounded by cliffs and waterfalls. There was a place that we were able to jump off of which was probably seven feet tall. The water was turquoise blue and was around 90 degrees. It was the cleanest and hottest natural water that I have ever been in. (Even cleaner than the Illinois River!) After spending a little less than an hour here, we left for the grottos!!  Before getting to the grottos, we noticed on various sections of the canyon walls were man-made semi circular “chapoteaderos” or splashing pools, which were created by damming small warm springs. The water inside the grotto was probably closer to 95 degrees.  Within the grotto, was waterfalls coming from the ceilings and walls and in the back of the grotto was a stream of water that you could see coming from an upward passage. This made a huge current within a part of the grotto that pushed you to the center of the grotto. We left the grotto to return to the restaurant for a quick lunch then headed to the hotel. The hotels that we were staying at were more like condos. We each had two roommates and every three people received a spacious room with a descent sized porch also. The view off of our front porch overlooked the countless pools of the resort. After getting settled in, we decided to go swimming in one of the leisure pools. The layout of the leisure pools reminded me of infinity pools. Each pool’s wall was a wall of a pool under it. Hard to explain, but if you look at the picture then you will understand what I mean. Although these pools weren’t much more than three and a half feet deep, they were fun to chill and talk in. After a while of this though, we started to get bored so we thought hey why not start a game of volleyball with the kids in the pool above us. We played an intense game of volleyball with the kids (age ranging from 5 to 12) for a good hour. About half way through the game, we had a pretty descent sized fan base watching the game and there was a constant stream of new kids coming to join the game. As my team slowly started to quit, eventually we were down to four of us against close to 15 of them. This is when we decided to admit defeat and go rejuvenate ourselves with some magical drinks. After a shower, we headed to the local tienda (convenience store) to pick up some beers. We first got some león cans and headed back to our porch with some other international students to chill out before dinner. Once our small gathering grew into a little party, we went back to the convenience store to get their liters of corona and a deck of cards. We got back to our condo and broke open the cards to find out that it was not a standard deck (Deck of 40 cards) and we went back to try and exchange this deck for a full deck but when we returned and questioned the store keeper, he had no idea what we were talking about and probably thought we were drunk. He went on to try and show us how to play the game with the 40 cards but something was lost in translation so we just decided to play Circle of Death (drinking game) instead of the Mexican card game. After a few liters of beer, we were finally ready for dinner. We arrived to dinner to found out that we were having burgers, quesadillas and a couple other typical Mexican dishes. We decided to go start the tequila and cokes after dinner. A few drinks later we decided to head down to the bonfire that our group set up. We hung around the bonfire, drinking some charro negros, eating strawberry flavored marshmallows and listening to some of the locals ghost stories. We headed back to the condos a little later to play some games and finish off the rest of the night.

    We woke up the next morning around 7:30 and headed to the restaurant for breakfast. Once breakfast was finished we started on a 3 kilometer hike back to our condos, through the woods and along the river. Before we started the hike, we arrived at the river which is a bluish green color from the minerals that the water picks up while travelling through the mountains. Although this water wasn’t as warm as the water yesterday, the sun felt amazing while playing around in the water. The river was separated by little 3 foot waterfalls that look harmless but I learned from experience that you do not want to have the water drag you along the rocks. As you can see from the pictures, the water was absolutely amazing and I wish we had water that looked like this in Peoria. After playing in the water for an hour or so, we decided to hit the trail. This hike was absolutely incredible, because even though we were in the middle of the desert, there was so much vegetation and water. When there were openings within the trees, we were able to look at the other side of the canyon that had cactuses as the only form of vegetation. I think that the pictures I have below speak for themselves. This hike was short but it really got me excited to take a trip to Chiapas and hike through the rain forest. Chiapas is a state in Mexico located south on the Yucatan Peninsula. I am writing my final presentation about Chiapas, so I will make sure to put that on the site when I finish. (Warning: The presentation will be in Spanish so start practicing or learning!!) We finished the hike and were given a couple hours to do whatever we wanted before having to check out. We spent a majority of the time in the deeper pool and diving well. Hopefully I can dig up some pictures soon of us diving because it was a sight to see. We were practicing our back flips and synchronized diving which ended with a few accidental belly flops. (Sorry Pedro!!) Eventually, we got tired of the water and decided to chill on our porch before having to check out. After check out, our day was not quite finished… We had to get back to the busses somehow and this time we didn’t feel like hiking or driving; so conveniently we had a zip line to take us to the bottom!!! This was my first time zip lining so I was pretty excited to be doing it at a place as nice as Tolantongo. The zip line consisted of four different runs and was a little over a mile long in total. Of course being as excited and adventurous as I am, I had to be the first one to go down on the zip line. I decided that I was going to take pictures on the first zip line and then switch and record the last three lines, but it ended up not working out to well for me. The zip line definitely went faster than I thought it would and with the gloves on my hands, I wasn’t able to snap too many pictures. As soon as I got done with the first zip line, they rushed me over to the next one and I went down that one then that process was repeated again and I was shoved down the next zip line. After this zip line I was able to relax for a second and wait for the others before proceeding to the final zip line. I decided that I would record the final zip line to show everyone that hasn’t been, just what it is like. (You can find that video below)  So how was my first time zip lining… Amazing! Flying through the air with nothing holding you in but a rope attached to a guide to follow down the wire. Let’s just say that it will definitely not be my last time zip lining. After everyone finished going down, we had about 30 minutes of time that we killed before heading to lunch and then back to the TEC. 
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     This is the first trip that was more high adventure and out of the city, so I was glad that I was able to experience Tolantongo. There is so much more of Mexico that I want to see that I will not get to experience this trip, but trust me; I will be back in Mexico before too long to finish off my Mexico to-do list.

Tirolesa (Zip-Lining)