El Chiflon
To think in 1966, five Mexicans from Bay City, Michigan created one of the defining pop tones of the second half of the 20th century. So, it’s funny, staring into and listening to the rhythms of one of the waterfalls of El Chiflon, that electric organ pops into your head.
The falls of El Chiflon rush down the mountainsides of southern Chiapas. The path up the river is all inlaid stone. There’s today’s obligatory ziplines. At each of the five falls a stand sells drinks, including cerveza. Like Wyoming’s Yellowstone, tourist trappings can not distract from the magic of the place.
Waterfalls enchant. Each waterfall has its own rhythms. Rushing, crashing, trance inducing.
Nature's own lyricism, cadent melodies like pounding ocean surf, though faster, constant, unrelenting.
Each fall pounds its own distinctive, thunderous beat, encompassing, transcendent.
Visually, water cascading the length of the fall is hypnotic. Waves tumble from the top, dissolving as gravity quickly pulls them toward the deep pools below.
Besides waterfalls, the only place of something similar are the clouds pouring over the edge of Table Mountain at the bottom of Africa. Like cascading water, the clouds spill over the flat mountain top, gradually dispersing, then disappearing half way down.
For several months, for hours a day, sitting in the roof garden of a Cape Town hotel, watching this cloud cascade, drinking beer, smoking a little tobacco and zol, and bedding European backpackers, stay clear of the beautiful Swiss nurses, especially the beautiful ones.
El Chiflon is about 100 km from the ruins of the classic Mayan city Tonina, a spectacular place of a different right. When the great Classical Maya civilization collapsed, of the scores of Maya cities, Tonina is known for carving the last glyph date of the Mayan long calendar, which in the Western calendar was 900 A.D.
The falls of El Chiflon saw those Maya, they will see the Maya a thousand years from now.