My First Backpacking Trip: Lost on the Usumacinta River

So today we tried to do our laundry after breakfast, but it was going to take almost all day, so we didn’t do it. After that I waited forty-five minutes in line to change forty dollars, and then we hopped on a bus to Tenosique de Pino Suárez.

Once there, we tried to catch a boat to Frontera Corozal so we could cross the border into Guatemala.

We ended up getting on a boat for six hundred pesos. The captain was only going as far as San José, but we were told we’d be able to find another guide there—someone who could take us through the rapids in the mountains and then transfer us to a calmer stretch of river. We paid another two hundred and fifty pesos, supposedly for gas, and went to eat at a small restaurant overlooking the river while we waited.

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The view was beautiful, but when we got back on the boat, something didn’t feel right. The three of us were thinking too much. Thoughts kept circling—being trapped on the river with two men we didn’t know, all our belongings exposed, the very real possibility of getting robbed again. The tension hung thick for a while, especially knowing our guide had already drunk half a bottle of tequila.
(All of this, of course, was in my head. I don’t know what the girls were really thinking.)

As we moved along, the landscape softened the edge of things. Small houses appeared along the banks, little boats tied up in the shallows, palm trees leaning toward the water. Every so often we saw cattle grazing near the river. Then we entered the canyon (Cañon Del Usumacinta).
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Huge green mountains rose up around us, lush and dense, full of shadow and mystery. Being down at the very bottom of it all made the mountains feel enormous—and us impossibly small.

At one point the guide pointed up toward large circular holes in the rock, about halfway up the cliff face. He told us they were passageways leading to the ruins of Palenque—tunnels that once connected the pyramids throughout the region. It was incredible to imagine people moving unseen through those mountains and across rope bridges centuries ago.

Eventually we neared San José. We pulled over—not onto the bank, but onto a small island in the middle of the river. From there we could see that just around the bend the water grew rougher, more agitated.

We hesitated. Should we get off the boat? Or should we stay on? The fear wasn’t just about being left there—it was about not being left there, about being carried farther into something we didn’t understand, in the middle of nowhere. I tried to stay calm. The two guides stepped off the boat as well.

We stood there looking around, amazed and uncertain. Sandrine, Vero, and I were trying to understand whether this really was San José, because it sounded like the guide was saying he would turn around and head back from here.

Sandrine asked him again about finding another way around the rapids. At first he didn’t understand. Then, when he finally did, he said San José was a very poor village and that people would kill for just one peso.

That was the moment something inside me broke open. It wasn’t just fear—it was a physical sensation, heavy and overwhelming. The worst fear of my life. He went on to say that even he wouldn’t trust anyone to guide him through those mountains, because of Zapatistas wandering around. You could get killed out there, he said.

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I turned to the girls and told them we should go back to town and find another way into Guatemala. The fear intensified when I asked the guide if we could go back now and he said no.

In my head, everything spiraled. Images of being killed. Of being left on the rocks. Of being robbed, stripped of everything, completely helpless. I could barely understand what the guides were saying anymore. I didn’t know what was happening.
I was terrified—the most scared I’ve ever been in my life.

Eventually we moved back toward the boat. The younger guide muttered something about the older man that I couldn’t understand. Everything was supposedly fine—we were going to turn back—but the fear didn’t really leave. It stayed with me all the way until dinner.

On the ride back I tried talking to the younger guy again. He rambled about a whorehouse in town or something like that, then warned me to be careful of the older guide, saying he was drunk and might try to take advantage of the girls as payment for the trip back. He said that was just how the system worked here.

In the end, we got off the boat without getting killed or raped, but I felt completely altered—like I’d taken a handful of magic mushrooms. My head buzzed, my body felt unreal and I couldn't shake that feeling of helplessness that overwhelmed me on that island.

We found a hotel for ninety pesos and met a German guy traveling alone from Villahermosa to Tikal. He was taking the same route into Guatemala as we were the next day. We had dinner together and planned to see each other again on the bus or back at the hotel.

Later, the girls told me that on the boat ride back to town, my face had turned a pale green. They hadn’t said anything then, but seeing how scared I was made them paranoid too.

I was so fucking scared today. Even now I still feel a little fuzzy from it.
Hopefully one day I’ll laugh about it.

In the next episode:

Another boat adventure…
where everyone nearly died from a swarm of killer bees.

My First Backpacking Trip:

Chapter 01: NYC to Mexico - Y2K
Chapter 02: NYC to Mexico - Cajun Wedding
Chapter 03: Everything is Lost
Chapter 04: Mexico City Finally!
Chapter 05: Robbery at Gun Point
Chapter 06: Sick but Safe in Veracruz
Chapter 07: Tlacotalpan and the Eyipantla Falls
Chapter 08: In the Land of Zapatistas
Chapter 09: Zapatistas and Skinheads
Chapter 10: Horseback To Chamula
Chapter 11: The Pyramids of Palenque