It took us a while to get chores finished this morning before we took off. We needed to clean house, get the rest of the kayak equipment stowed, dump & fill with fresh water. When we traveled here 6 years ago we experienced how poor the water pressure was and Art, our then “neighbor” at El Manglar, loaned us his small electric pump to use when filling. Since that trip, Tobey has purchased a pump of our own. He and our son, Tyler, installed an exterior electrical connection to our battery and it works like a charm when the water pressure is bad! Once we got chores finished, we spent a while talking to our current neighbors, Ken and Joellen, from Calgary. They gave us some great pointers of things to do in Uruapan which we are looking forward to. They also have a blog, so we will check that out again when we have good internet! After a quick lunch, we bid farewell to El Manglar and headed out through Zihuatanejo to our next stop. We were both pleased we made it through the city with no wrong turns!
Back on the MEX200 free road, we passed through several small villages. There are always lots of little stands set up selling everything from fruits and vegetables to salt and souvenirs. In this little village, all of the stands had people out front waving flags at you to get your attention to stop at their place.
We turned off the MEX200 and onto the MEX37D Cuota (toll) road heading north. Shortly after the second toll booth there was a lineup of about 20 huge trucks carrying “peligroso” materials (dangerous) all parked along side the road. At the front of the line was a federal police car. We wondered if they would have an escort through the hilly region.
A little further down the road this truck had a crash and burn incident. There was no one around so we have no idea how long it had been sitting there. There wasn’t much left!
Soon we were following Presna Infiernillo Dam and reservoir (Little Hell) on the Balsas River. It is also known as the Adolfo Lopez Mateos Dam. The dam supports a large hydroelectric station that has six turbine generators. The dam is 489 feet high and 1129 feet long. Construction of the dam was completed in December 1963 and the HUGE reservoir began to fill in June of 1964. The reservoir has a total capacity of 9,728,558 acre feet of water. In case you are wondering, there are 325,850 GALLONS in ONE acre foot of water, so this reservoir is massive!
Some areas in Mexico have fish farms. I couldn’t find out for sure, but we wondered if these were some kind of fish farm in the reservoir.
We crossed several bridges as we drove along the river/reservoir. Six years ago, they were busy painting all of these bridges!
After we got off the Cuota we headed up the MEX37 free road. We needed a few veggies and Tobey spotted a stand in Lombardio so we stopped. After crossing the road, it turned out to be an entire Saturday market so we had a good look-see for about five blocks. We were able to buy 4 carrots, a large onion, a pepper and 3 avocados for 18 pesos – about $1USD!
We also saw some stands that were advertising tamarindos. Not sure what they were, we stopped at another stand. No, these weren’t tamarindos, but the lady had us try them. Not so tasty. They came in a long pod and she said they are good for your stomach! We also tried another bright yellow fruit that was about the size of a cherry. We have no idea what either of these were, but we will attempt to find out!
Not much further up the road we came to our turnoff for Cascada de la Tzararacua. It was a left turn onto a steep road that was basically a hairpin turn back the way we were coming from. Sharp left, back up a little, then sharp left some more and we were on our way down the hill to the parking area for the cascades.
There is supposed to be a $15 pesos admission, but there was no one collecting money as we started off for the falls about 4:30 pm. The Rio Cupatitzio spills over a 100 foot high rock cliff and crashes into a huge pool. The walk down the 557 steps to the falls took about 30 minutes. We had been warned that there was a lot of trash, but we were pleasantly surprised to see very little trash. Instead, there were many barrels along the way and it seems that there has been an effort to clean the place up. 
This was our first good view of the falls.
In the picture above, you can see a cable across the river. They offer zip lining across the pool and also some through the trees. We saw a couple young men carrying helmets out as we were heading down, so we assume they were finished for the day.
The 557 steps didn’t seem so bad on the way down, but we did stop a few times on the way back up to catch our breath. It’s funny, though, it took longer going down than it did coming back up!
When we got back to the RV, we asked the man who owns the store in front of us if we could park here overnight. He said, yes, no problem. He said he lives here and it is fine. There is a small restaurant, the horse stables, and a small store. It must be Saturday night because the restaurant is playing its music REALLY loud and there are only a few people here! We hope they stop soon. Tomorrow we head on to Uruapan.
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