Hierve el Agua and Zipolite beach

From Orizaba we drove to Hierve el Agua, which translate into “the water boils”. The rock formations are created by fresh water springs, whose water is over-saturated with calcium carbonate and other minerals. As the water scurries over the cliffs, the excess minerals are deposited creating this sight (Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierve_el_Agua):

The underground bubbling mineral springs run into natural infinity pools on the cliff’s edge. The mineral-laden water is cool to cold but swimmable.

The view from the edge is amazing…

Hiked to the bottom of Hierve el Aqua… it looked liked a petrified waterfall

The sky was getting more and more cloudy…

We put up the tent, and got up early the next morning hoping for a clear sky… not exactly a clear sky, but the clouds where rolling over the mountain edge (right picture)

We packed our motorcycles and put on the rain gear and rode towards the beach town Zipolite. We only made it to the gate at Hierve el Agua, because it was still locked. We had been locked inside the area of Hierve el Agua, which happens a lot of places when you stay overnight at tourist sights here in Mexico. The best part is that it keeps unwanted visitors outside, and we do feel safer when we camp in our tent.

5 minutes later one of the employees showed up, and we where on the road. First the weather just got worse…

But we were lucky that it cleared up again during the day. In the right picture you see us passing through a small town, but it had traffic lights. Because of all the plastic banners hanging across the street, it was really difficult to see the traffic lights, while keeping an eye out for speed bumps at the same time. The result was that I overlocked 2 or 3 traffic lights, nothing bad happened. Just saying that you really have to pay attention.

The road got more and more twisty, and we both used more and more of the sides of the tires… maybe my knobby tire (Dunloop 606) will last longer!

As we got closer to the beach we hit rain again, lowering our speed even more on the twisty road.

Several places we meet landslides and mud on the road, or fallen trees/braches. We really had to be alert all the time… the plan was to reach the beach at 1 pm, but the road and weather condition’s added 1½ hour to our drive.

When we finally got to Zipolite we were exhausted, and because of the extra driving time, we didn’t make it in time for the turtle museum . A lot of rain had fallen during the day!

The turtle museum was closed to next two days, and we decided to camp at this nice place at the beach. The Mexican people were really worried that we had to sleep in our tent because it was suppose the rain again during the night. We tried to explain that our tent is waterproof, but we also found out that it is really unusually to have a waterproof tent here in Mexico.

The wind was blowing and though the tent was waterproof, we found out that is was not sand proof, so we had to put two of our bag onto the tent fly to prevent the sand of getting into the tent.