Seth Barnes Jan 8, 2007 7:00 PM

The commercialization of incredible beauty

We'd finished the Sunday service in the Chiapas village and eaten the cow that they'd butchered and cooked up for the whole village to eat. I remember...

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We'd finished the Sunday service in the Chiapas village and eaten the cow that they'd butchered and cooked up for the whole village to eat. I remembered a spectacular series of waterfalls that I'd stumbled across 27 years ago as I was driving to Honduras. It was a sunny day - perfect to go back and visit them again.

The place is called Aguas Azules "blue waters," and when I turned off the main highway to check them out in 1980, I had no idea what I would find at the end of the badly rutted, obscure dirt road. The road stopped at a sight so arresting, I couldn't believe it.

The waters were indeed blue, and they tumbled through the jungle in a series of steps that separated and rejoined in fantastic ways. How great it was to discover something that rivals Victoria Falls in splendor, yet was hidden off the beaten track, uncelebrated in the travel guidebooks. There was one or two other families there at the time, but that was it.

We'd finished the Sunday service in the Chiapas village and eaten the cow that they'd butchered and cooked up for the whole village to eat. I remembered a spectacular series of waterfalls that I'd stumbled across 27 years ago as I was driving to Honduras. It was a sunny day - perfect to go back and visit them again.

The place is called Aguas Azules "blue waters," and when I turned off the main highway to check them out in 1980, I had no idea what I would find at the end of the badly rutted, obscure dirt road. The road stopped at a sight so arresting, I couldn't believe it.

The waters were indeed blue, and they tumbled through the jungle in a series of steps that separated and rejoined in fantastic ways. How great it was to discover something that rivals Victoria Falls in splendor, yet was hidden off the beaten track, uncelebrated in the travel guidebooks. There was one or two other families there at the time, but that was it.

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