The Guadalajara Reporter

The endless "two-hour" trip to the Cajon reservoir

The Cajon de Peña is said to be one of the most beautiful reservoirs in Mexico, located near Tomatlan, Jalisco, 25 kilometers from the Pacific Coast road. When my fellow travelers Pedro and Eduardo showed it to me on the map, I figured we’d head for it via Puerto Vallarta, 80 kilometers to the north.

 

“No, No,” said Pedro, his eyes gleaming. “We’re going to take the direct route.” On the map he pointed to a long string of curvy tertiary dirt roads connecting Talpa, Jalisco with Tomatlan.

“How long is that going to take?” I asked.

“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll ask someone in Talpa what the road’s like.”

A few hours later, in Talpa, we inquired with some truckers about “the direct route.”

“You want to go that way? We would never do that. If you break down, there’s not a soul to help you.”

“How long will it take?”

“Bueno, maybe two hours.”

“Aha! And do you think our vehicle can make it?” asked Pedro, his eyes still gleaming.

“Bueeeeno, creo que si, pero ...”

And off we went ... straight to our first crossroads.

“Hmm, I thought the next town was straight ahead,” commented Pedro.

By trial and error (mostly the latter), we found the next town, Aranjuez.

“How long to reach the dam?” we asked a passerby.

“Two hours,” was the laconic reply.

Thirty kilometers later, we found ourselves crossing the pine-covered Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains, on a cobblestone road barely wide enough for one car to pass and, of course, with the traditional Mexican 1,000-foot drop on one side.

Finally, we came to a microwave antenna and descended to a town called Murguía.

“How far is it to the dam?” we asked.

“Two hours,” came the now familiar reply.

Next came a half-hour of hairpin curves which brought us to a fork in the road. Both branches looked well traveled. Fortunately, there was a ranch house nearby, but shout all we wanted, not a soul appeared. This was the first of I don’t know how many Y- and T-junctions next to mysteriously abandoned ranchos. We eventually decided that a big fiesta was going on somewhere in the neighborhood.

 

After five more hours of fording numerous rivers and backtracking, we finally completed our “two-hour” trip from Talpa to the Cajon de Peña Dam, which is also known as Cajon de Peñas. By sheer luck, we stumbled upon the Rancho Andrea cabins, where we found clean, inexpensive lodging overlooking this big lake, which is 12 kilometers long by five wide, the biggest reservoir in all Jalisco. Here you can enjoy fishing for largemouth bass (lobina), as well as boating, swimming or water skiing. There’s even a unique petroglyph nearby. And as for birdwatching, you’ll find over 150 species here, including egrets, cranes, groove-billed anis (ticuzes) and wild parrots (in particular, a large colony of wild Military Macaw). We didn’t manage to catch ourselves a 13-pound bass (the lake record) but we were lucky enough to get a rare glimpse of a guinduri – a kind of bobcat – racing across the road. There are supposedly three mariscos restaurants on the lakeshore, easily reachable from the coastal road, but we didn’t have a chance to check them out.

You can make a reservation for a cabin at Rancho Andrea, which claims to be “The Best Kept Secret in Mexico,” by calling (52) 322-225-8294 or through their website: www.ranchoandrea.com. Email is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . They have cooking facilities but no restaurant.

How to get there.

Unless you thoroughly enjoy flipping a coin at lonely forks in a dirt road, you’d best plan a visit to Cajon de la Peña from Puerto Vallarta or Manzanillo. It’s more or less half way from either of these towns, after which you must turn inland (east) at the El Tule intersection and drive about 25 kilometers. From either direction you’ll have at least eighty kilometers of twisting coast road to negotiate, but it’s mostly all paved. The good thing is that no matter where you start from, you can be sure – according to my many sources – that you’ll always be at the dam in “only two hours.”