On February 13th, 2010, The Canoe Guru joined Esprit Mexico Adventures for an exhilerating 10 days of canoeing.  Jim Coffey, Dooley Tombras and Eli Helbert headed off to the Rio D'Oro with LVM's Will Lyons to video some extreme canoeing for the new Canoe Movie debuting this fall.  On the 2nd day, we paddled the Four 4's of the Barranca Grande.  This was a quick trip for Dooley and Will, but I really enjoyed the intro to Mexico paddling with those guys. 

That evening, as Dooley and Will prepared to head back to the Southeastern US by enjoying Carnaval and a small town Mexican circus, the Canoeing Physician's from Arkansas arrived in Jalcomulco on the same flight as the tandem canoeing team of Don and Joe Beyer.  Jim, Eli and the new arrivals spent the next 7 days together canoeing the Veracruz region of Mexico.  We began our week of rivers surfing on the Antiqua River.  On our second day, we visited a nature reserve at the put-in and then canoed the Rio Octopan.  Day 3 we stayed local and paddled the Pescados section of the Barranca Grande.  We then switched river systems and visited the Filo river.  We spent the night in a lodge overlooking the river valley we had just paddled down.  In the morning, we walked over to Encanto Falls and put-in at it's base on the Rio Filo-Bobos.  We drove back across the Volcano to Jalcolmuco where we paddled the four 4's of the Barranca grande for the last day of the week of rivers. 

I was back in solid paddling form at this point and had heard rave reviews of the waterfalls on the upper, middle and lower Tomate run on the Alseseca river.  I had also heard warnings of the polluted water, but our trial turned out to be a broken window and stolen pesos at the takeout.  All in all, it was still a wonderful trip.  After a solid week and a half canoeing, I spent my final day in Mexico paddling 42 miles of continuous whitewater on the Rio Barranca Grande.  This was an amazing experience that makes me interested in the big 50.