Bits of advice for paddling and traveling in northern Central America

Spanish is the predominant langauge in the MayanWhiteWater world, except in Belize where many speak English, and in many villages in Guatemala, where one of 21 Mayan dialects or other langauges may be spoken. But in general, Spanish will get you by, and it is difficult to get around without some. Fortunately there are many cheap language schools in the area, and I recommend taking advantage of them for a week or so if you plan to spend much time traveling around.

First-time visitors to Central America will inevitably come down with travelers' diarrhea or worse. Paddlers are exposed to an extra source of water-borne parasites and bacteria, and paddlers staying more than a week have a 50/50 chance of picking up an intestinal bug. Diarrhea lasting for more than 3 days is your sign to visit a doctor, who usually will know just the drug for you.

Though civil wars and other area-wide conflicts are a last-century thing, Latin America is generally not as safe as the United States. But with a bit of luck and taking a few common-sense precautions you will avoid any unpleasant situations. Of course in touristy areas watch out for pickpockets and avoid empty city streets at night. Also don't leave your car on the street at night. The capital cities of all Latin America countries are particularly crime-suffering and there are definitely certain of their neighborhoods you should never enter. The violent crime that you read about in the papers is not tourist-targeted. In general, rural areas are safer than cities, but on rare occasions nasty incidents do happen: buses get held up, groups get kidnapped, female travelers get raped. Reading the State Department warnings from the U.S. or the E.U. in recent years is enough to frighten even intrepid travelers, but they generally exaggerate the situation.

Kayakers and other adventurous types have the advantage of showing up in places where they are not expected, and we generally enjoy a warm welcome. I personally have never been held up, despite 21 years of traveling wherever and whenever I felt like it, often times solo. Crime is often random, localized, and a game of chance, no matter where you are in the world. My suggestion is to ask the locals if you are unsure of a particular road or area. Some command of Spanish is quite helpful.

The growing drug trade and drug violence, while alarming, also does not pose an imminent threat to kayakers or other tourists, unless you are poking around the Mexico-Guatemala border in a wrong-place-wrong-time scenario. Again the locals are usually the best source of information. If I become aware of any place to avoid in the future I will mention it here and in the corresponding write-ups.

Despite the generally hospitable nature of Central America, there are some rural areas of Chiapas and Guatemala where strangers are not immediately welcomed. These are areas where the locals have organized against damming and mining interests. Any stranger entering these areas is immediately suspected of pertaining to these interests, and may be confronted or even detained, to be brought before a town council meeting before being released. In Chiapas this can happen in Zapatista-controlled areas, usually signed (the most common trouble spot is the Río Jataté, please refer to that page for my latest advice). In Guatemala this is most common in the departamentos of Huehuetenango, Totonicapán, and Quiché. In these areas you may want to ask if the local people are "delicada". Of course, us paddlers are not crazy about dams either. But don't expect your intellectual commonality to translate well when you are caught "trespassing."

In addition, in some (non-touristy) rural areas of Central America, a paranoia about foreigners "stealing babies" or stealing organs has developed over the years. Surprise visits by outsiders can awaken this paranoia. Tourists should be sensitive to this when they approach women and children in the countryside.

Note that these issues only pertain to a small fraction of the runs; if a river passes through a sensitive area, it will be noted in the per-country tables and in the write-ups.

My Mayan Whitewater series of guidebooks are the only up-to-date guidebooks in these regions. This series includes a guidebook for Chiapas and Belize writeen by Rocky Contos and me, as well as books for Guatemala and El Salvaodr/Honduras/Nicaragua. All can be ordered here. Aside from those, there is a 2000-edition guidebook for Mexico called A Gringo's Guide to Mexican Whitewater by Tom Robey which includes the main jungle rivers in Chiapas. For Honduras there is a 1997-edition book called Honduras: The Undiscovered Country by Andrew Hibbard of Ríos Honduras which describes 17 rivers (noted on the Honduras river table).

In case you're interested in what others have written about the area's whitewater, check out this list.

A good road map is a must for any boater, and the basic tourist ones often won't do. Digital maps have good coverage and useful time estimates, and will suffice for most people, though they still aren't perfect for route planning and still have town naming errors. For those interested in paper maps, here are my suggestions. In Mexico, pick up a good road atlas. In Guatemala, pick up the excellent International Travel Maps-produced map. In Belize, the best one is published by National Geographic, but really any map will do, there aren't many roads anyway. In Honduras and El Salvador, I have yet to find an adequate map; the most complete ones are the "official" wall-sized maps sold in their respective Geographic Institute offices.

For serious exploring you may want to look at the topo maps, some of which are available on-line. 1:50,000 maps are now available online for Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Chiapas has smaller scale maps (250k and 500k) available online, but for large scale maps you will need to go to the INEGI office in Tuxtla Gutierrez, where you can buy or browse. Belize topos are available locally only at the Land Information Center office at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Agriculture in Belmopan, on Queen Elizabeth II Blvd. OmniMap also advertises topos for all these countries (https://www.omnimap.com/catalog/int/topo.htm).

To translate my metric meters-per-kilometer gradients into feet-per-mile, multiply by five; E.g., 10 m/km = 50 ft/mi.

If you have your own car, but don't have a driver, you can usually find one easily through a local hotel or business. $15-$20 per day will usually do it. Taxi drivers are also reliable but usually want more like $20 or $30 per day (in your car). Before you put-on, make sure to note the driver's phone number, and carry some money for emergencies. Agree on contingency plans.

If you don't have a car, you can usually easily find a pickup and driver to take you, but it won't be cheap. Or, if your access points are on public bus routes, you can use public transportation. I mention this option, when available, in the write-ups. The general problem with buses is that put-ins are often in mountain villages with limited service in the mornings (most buses leave the villages in the morning and return in the afternoon).

Central America enjoys warm, tropical weather, though the temperatures vary some by season and elevation. The year is basically divided into a dry season and a rainy season (see below). It is always warm near the coasts, but it can be quite cool up in the mountains, especially so when cold fronts come through from December to February. The warmest time of the year is the end of the dry season (March to May), when there are few clouds and rain to cool things off. A good online source of average temperatures and rainfalls in different cities is at WorldWeatherOnline.com (not always derived from recorded data but pretty good for a general idea).

You may hear people talk about a "canícula", which means an extended period (10 days or more) with little or no rain in the middle of the rainy season, usually happening in July and/or August. You don't want to hear that word.

The most dramatic weather phenomena are hurricanes and tropical storms/depressions. These can bring a lot of rain, usually to one side of the continental divide or the other. NOAA has some helpful storm forecasts for the Pacific side and the Caribbean side. Another good source for keeping up with the current weather and understanding these storms is Yale Climate Connection's Eye on the Storm weather blog.

There are a few rivers that run year-round, but most rivers run deep only during the rainy season, which on the Pacific side is June to October, and on the Caribbean side is July to January, with some areas receiving rain into March. From June to October the biggest generator of precipitation, hurricanes notwithstanding, is the daily tropical water cycle which brings afternoon and evening rains. From November to February the biggest rain generator, felt mostly on the Caribbean side, are the northern cold fronts which mix with the region's warmer/humid air masses to produce rain. I indicate the boating season for the different regions in the per-country tables.

The peak of the water in all areas is mid-September to mid-October, when everything but the smallest creeks will have boatable flows (a few rivers may even have too much water). The smaller creeks can go off at any time during the rainy season, they just require the luck of several days in a row of heavy rain, and only give you a 1 or 2-day window to catch them.

Online river gauges (see below), rain gauges, weather stations, and infrared radar are helpful for guessing how the water is in a certain area. The river gauges give you the most reliable information on how the rivers are flowing, but in some places their coverage is limited. Charts for the most interesting rain gauges are placed on my maps. The map icons are color-coded: means good rain yesterday, means little or no rain yesterday, and means recent measurements are unavailable (or you need to click through to the site to see the data. Many of the data are from U.S. and local government agencies (the same agencies responsible for river gauges described below). Weather Underground supports an ever-growing network of weather stations; you can see them all on the WunderMap. There are some extra weather stations in Chiapas also. NOAA (USA) produces interesting histories, including a nice graphic showing the past week's rainfall relative to history. Regional infrared radar is supplied by NASA, where you can see the clouds/rainfall for the last 8 hours.

There are several online sources of weather forecasts, though I tend not to rely on them too much since rainfall can be so spotty. Maybe the most informative (in Spanish) is the Mexican government's pronósticos on the SMN website. Windfinder.com, Weather.com and Weather Underground will give you forecasts for selected cities. COLA provides an interesting 4-day regional graphical rainfall forecast, and NOAA has forecasts of varying lengths.

In Chiapas, the weather (and river) agency is called Conagua. They have specific forecasts for the southern region for 24 hours and 96 hours (they come out a few hours after the general forecast.) They publish a map of 3-day accumulated and forecast rainfall (and a 1/3/24-hour map). They used to publish rainfall data and a past-24 hour isopluvial map in a daily report (along with streamflow data, see below). For Guatemala the weather (and river and earthquake and volcano and tidal wave) agency is INSIVUMEH. On their meterological links you can find a daily forecast, workweek/weekend forecasts, and a daily isopluvial map (and other maps); they also put a lot of updates out on their twitter feed. I combine their isopluvial/forecast graphics into one 3-day-past and 1-day-future graphic. The Salvadorean environmental agency is MARN. They provide an isopluvial map for yesterday and per-station graphs for the past 3/5/7/10/30 days, and have some kinda-interesting charts of flow predictions if you poke around. The Honduras government operates an on-line weather station data platform (2019: not working), and 3 times a month puts out a 10 day rainfall isograph and a 10 day outlook. Nicaragua's INETER puts out a daily forecast also. NOAA reports rain readings for Central America, mostly in Honduras, on their HADS site.

For those hungry for more information, NOAA's Model Analyses and Guidance (MAG) website also supplies some data-driven models of rainfall (and other parameters). These models are getting better all the time. You can go directly to the map of interest for Central America here, then you select the model and then the time range on the PRECIP PARAMS line.

Tropical storms and hurricanes, especially prevalent on the Caribbean side, can have a lot to say about water levels in the rainy season, but are not very helpful for boaters. They bring the threat of severe flash floods and washed-out roads. You can get tracking and analysis of these storms on Yale Climate Connection's Eye on the Storm weather blog. Normally, however, having too much water in a river is rare (at least in the morning). See this page for warnings about flash floods.

In mayanwhitewater-land there are several networks of online gauges maintained by the respective country's weather and hydro agencies. In Central America many of these are made available online by the American agency NOAA on their HADS site, where you can see the levels one week back. The gauges have a placemarker on my maps where I have consolidated all the known available data, with current readings in the bubble, links to any pertinent site, and any historical data that I have. Also in the write-ups I try to link to the relevant gauges and what gauge heights to look for.

Many of the gauges offer just a height reading, though in Chiapas and Guatemala a flow reading is usually available also. The actual flow number is suspect, though, since the calibrations may change flood-to-flood. So at least as interesting as the actual gauge height/flow number is seeing the rise and fall pattern of the past week (for NOAA gauges you can see hour-by-hour activity), since almost all the runs are rain-dependent. If the river is going up and down significantly most days, that's a good sign of significant rain and a good chance to catch a boatable flow. (Numbers for the hydro gauges, which offer a flow reading, are more trustworthy.)

Gauges with placemarks on my maps are color-coded according to the flow readings: means "interesting" (high enough that some run in the area is up), means "interesting" and the flow went up in the last couple days, means "uninteresting" (low), means no up-to-date flow readings are available, means no up-to-date flow or height readings are available. However, many of the gauges I have not calibrated or verified, which means I'm doing a lot of guessing.

Following is a more detailed description of where I find the data for my links and graphs:

In Chiapas, streamflows for a fair number of rivers are monitored and published by Conagua in a daily report, which I save on my server daily (the historical data is not easily available from Conagua). Many of the gauges have a flow reading; the others have a height reading which may give you an idea if the water is up or down. The interesting gauges have their own markers on my maps, where I place an up-to-date flow graph that I derive from my database. Some of the gauges, especially on the Pacific coast, were damaged by Hurricane Stan in 2005 and have yet to be repaired. (Currently the page is down. Conagua also sends the daily report by email, which is more reliable than their web page. You can request to be added to their list.)

For some rivers in Chiapas I have been able to obtain historical flow data from INEGI and the charts are presented in the river descriptions and gauge placemarks. I have noticed that on average the historical flows are higher than what I've seen. Either 1) rainfall happens to be less this century, 2) streamflows are decreasing over time, or 3) many gauges weren't calibrated accurately.

In Guatemala INSIVUMEH is the river gauge caretaker. They provide a daily report of river flows and heights, and I make 30-day graphs of this data available on the maps. The coverage good in some areas, poor in others. (btw none of the gauge readings are available on their NOAA/HADS page (select Guatemala).) Those gauges, and a couple more, are also shown on the INSIVUMEH real-time gauge map. The electrical agency INDE also monitors a few rivers with important hydro facilities, and flow readings show up daily on the AMM (electricity market) site, as well as planned releases one day (and more) ahead (flows, under the "Resultados" link--which show up one day later on my graphs--and planned releases under "Planificación" link).

In El Salvador the agency responsible for the gauges is SNET. Their river height gauges give very good coverage. They continuously update their river report, and you can see even more river and meteorological stations on their clickable station map (circles are river height stations). Releases for the dams in the Río Lempa drainage are also published online by the UT organization.

In Honduras the agencies responsible for the gauges are MIAMBIENTE and ENEE. Honduras has a fair number of gauges which can be seen on the NOAA/HADS page (select Honduras). Week-ahead and day-ahead "programacion" reports of hydro generation are posted on the Operador del Sistema website.

In Nicaragua, INETER is the responsible agency. The gauges, all on the Caribbean side and mostly for lowland rivers, are on the NOAA/HADS page (select Nicaragua). The CNDC website also has the hydro generation reports.

There are no online gauges in Belize.

In the write-ups I give water quality ratings ranging from good to poor. There are many more rivers with poor water quality than with good water quality in Central America. In fact no river here can be considered pristine or safe to drink. Human, animal, and agricultural waste are the main culprits. Personally I am willing to put up with a bit of trash in the bushes or float by women doing their laundry in the river, but even I have my limits. A few rivers, usually downstream from large towns and cities, are so polluted (smelly/sudsy) I have not even bothered looking for put-ins. But be warned: you swallow a mouthful of water in most rivers around here, you will suffer the consequences which often involves prescription drugs. I recommend noseplugs too.

I have not done any scientific analysis of any stream. INSIVUMEH has an ongoing monitoring project in the Ostúa/Olopa basins and you can find their reports here (in Spanish).

Note: water color is not very indicative of water quality. Many of the rivers down here run brown in the rainy season which is due to natural sediment. That said, clearer water in some cases indicates spring sources, which is indeed cleaner than rainwater run-off. Also, water temperature is a big indicator. Warmer water harbors more bacteria, whereas colder water indicates higher elevation or spring sources.