A Trip To Sierra De San Francisco By: Gabriel Johnston

 A week ago, most of my family went on a trip to Sierra de San Francisco to celebrate a friend's birthday.  We stayed for two nights and three days, which were packed with exciting adventures, and a lot of good memories. 

On Monday, I rose at 4:10am to the sound of my alarm. Shortly after, everyone else woke up and the last minute preparations began. We left at 5:30 tired, but ready for the trip up ahead.

As  we rose up the mountains, the sun rose with us. The views were stunning. I had never been so inspired as when I could see the gorgeous orange rays of light illuminating the goat filled mountain tops. The village slowly came into view, showing the trip getting ever closer.

After checking in, we hopped back in the truck and went down dirt roads to our starting point, Rancho Guadalupe. We got there and immediately saw who one of our guides was going to be. At first, we thought he was a strict and cold old man. But as the trip went on he started warming up to us, where at the end, he was asking for our phone number and cracking jokes left and right. Angel, which was his name, told us that we would need to take our items out of our camping boxes to put into smaller crates. We never got an explanation as to why, but we assume that the donkeys were smaller and older than previous trips. About an hour later, our other guide Chico, and his son, Rodrigo showed up and we were about to leave.

The three of them made quick work packing up the mules. I barely had time to put on my helmet, and gloves before it was time to mount my mule, Pinto. Pinto was a dirty whitish colored mule, who was a medium sized one compared to the ones I saw on the trip. It was time to go and I was so excited.

The way down was a bit nerve racking for me with all the loose rocks and sharp turns. Even though I had done this twice before, I was still amazed at what the mules and donkeys could do. When I reached the bottom I didn't know what to be more impressed by- the fact that I had gone down the mountain or the fact that I had gone down on the back of an animal.

    Although we were at the bottom, we were not done yet. Mile wise, we were only in the middle.

We rode through a canyon filled with nothing but pools of water, boulders and palm trees.  It was so absurd to be riding over these boulders, seeing the wind blowing palm fawns out of the trees all around. After a slow hour, we finally arrived at camp.

It was interesting to see how much the campsite had changed since the last time I was there. The palm fawns were everywhere, so I cleared a path. In a place that used to be a jungle of trees, there was now a spot to cook. The water levels had also changed, making it harder to remember where everything was. Once we set up camp, we chilled for the rest of the night waiting for the day to come.

 I woke up to a breakfast of muffins . We wanted to leave early to beat the sun. We started with a fun hike to our first cave, Las Flechas. One thing they don’t advertise, and I certainly did not remember, was the systems of trails.. They were trails that not even the mule could do. There are parts where you need to duck under cacti, jump from spot to spot, use little rock footstools, it was all there.

We got to Las Flechas. We did not spend much time there but what I remember from this trip was that it depicts  chiefs/gods above some people . Common trends are deer, sized to show the difference between gods and humans, red and black as good and evil, and half men, half animal creatures. 

We quickly left and went to get water. There are some natural springs in the canyon and we went to the one nearest to camp. It is in between Las Flechas, and Las Pintada. I find it crazy how these springs have been releasing water for years. I can only imagine how long it's been running, but also how much is in there, and how long it will last. The guides use branches from palm trees to tap the water. Their ingenuity always amazes me.

 

La Pintada is the longest Cave painting at the site and is also my favorite. It was too long and complex for me to see the story, but there were still a lot of interesting things. One of the first things you see is a giant whale proving that in some shape and form that they were nomadic.

That makes me wonder if they also used mules to travel in and  out of the canyon, or if they did it on foot. Later on you would see wolves and birds.

With this cave being so long, its topics were very diverse. You could even see crosses in the middle of the cave although they were looking more recent. Does that mean the missionaries came to the caves and did that to mark their territory? Does it mean that the natives put it there to show their change to Christianity? Did it mean that Christianity was an enemy? With all the time in the canyon it really gives you a chance to think. After checking out a rock with some interesting patterns, and some machaca tacos we headed back to a lunch of pasta salad.

Once we washed the dishes, we decided to go to a deep pool of water used for swimming.

When we got cold, we saw another pool filled with a mossy/algae material that felt like wool. It must have taken a half hour to clear it and in the middle of the session, Beto went to see another cave painting. Once it was done we swam laps in the clean pool. 

We kept saying we were going to go, but then someone would jump in, leading the rest of us to jump in, resetting the cycle. This may have been the highlight of the trip. I really enjoyed the time with my family, and our friends. I think with this trip, I grew a lot closer with my family.

It was another chill night. We talked with the guides a lot and I went to bed early, as I was very tired. But in the middle of the night, I woke to the sounds of rocks falling down the mountain. It turned out that a donkey wanted to station themselves above us, and had problems getting up there. That woke up all the frogs, and every frog in the area was croaking all night.

But somehow we all made it to the morning with another muffin breakfast. We were packing early and the majority of the trip up happened to be in the shade. The mules were being very stubborn that day but we eventually made it up. Going up I had no problems with any sort of fear. When we got up we had a nice pizza lunch and after paying, we left. 

This trip was one of the best experiences of my life. When I was younger I couldn’t really appreciate the cave paintings, but now I can. It was important for me not just to learn history from books but from seeing artifacts and historical sites. The drawings of the crosses really did shock me, as it was not something you would expect to see in 10,000 year old drawings. I would recommend this experience to anyone with  the opportunity. I think both the experience and the historical value makes it something that is a ton of fun. As they say in Mexico, Adios!