words by Rafa Ortiz
photos by Alfredo Martinez
This past February, we set off into an incredible adventure with a mission: finding the roots of kayaking in Mexico. Pancho Lisci, Joel Kowalski and myself, spent a couple of weeks with the local Lacandonian tribes learning their stories and then negotiating huge river descents. “Nature must be respected as it is, as a whole. We don’t chop more wood than we need”.- Lectured us Cayum, the chief of the tribe. These people carve tree trunks into 30ft long ‘kayukos’, which they scare crocodiles away with, when paddling across the lakes. And later the freefall, the specialty of Chiapas. Travertine rocks form the steepest paradise, marginally sane. I hope the pictures tell the rest.
