A one-man revolution in Barranca de Otates
- Details
- Published on Friday, 31 August 2012 12:09
- Written by John Pint
“A funny thing happened to us on our way to the cave.”
This is one of my favorite expressions, as not only funny things have happened, but also beautiful and inspiring things, mainly because of the extraordinary people we inevitably come upon in those lonely, out-of-the-way places where a cave may or may not exist, but where we often find adventure and friendship … and in the case of Barranca de Otates, signs of a most interesting “idea revolution” operating in rural Mexico.
This particular story began several months ago when I got an email from a man named Joe Ureña in California asking where he could get a copy of my book Outdoors in Western Mexico. I soon discovered, at mosaiclegs.com, that in the United States Joe is a designer, creator and worldwide installer of beautiful mosaics, but his personal roots are in a little town called Barranca de Otates, where he often spends months at a time. Once he mentioned that there was a cave on his ranch, I offered to hand-deliver a copy of the book if he wouldn’t mind allowing a few cavers to camp on his property one night.
So it was that six of us Guadalajara cave explorers headed for Barranca de Otates on a fine Saturday. This winding canyon is located 25 kilometers due west of Jocótepec and Lake Chapala, easy to reach via the old “libre” road from Guadalajara to Colima.
As we drove through the town, my friend Rodrigo Orozco remarked, “This pueblito is shaped like a sausage.” In fact, it stretches for about three kilometers, following the Otates River, which is so serpentine, it seemed we had to drive through it a thousand times to get to Rancho Real, where Joe Ureña welcomed us with open arms and showed us an area to camp under tall shade trees behind his house, which, he pointed out, was over 300 years old. It soon became clear that Joe and his family lived in a simple, rustic style, which surprised me, knowing he was the head of an important, much sought-after company. He might have built a posh manor here, but instead had chosen to continue centuries-old traditions.