COAST AND SOCONUSCO ROADS
"Green roads in the sun earth Who shakes their smells tunic and dwells the torrents of harmony
when the tropic passes under the day and displays colored flags?"
Armando Duvalier, XX Century
To all those who are looking for a close contact with nature and other Chiapas faces, there is anything
better than to travel through the roads of the coast and Soconusco region, the cacao land. Miguel de
Cervantes Saavedra asked for this place's government before the Spanish Emperor. The coast and
Soconusco roads own a great variety of tourist attractions and marvelous trips, near the Pacific Ocean
amazing natural beauties, the beautiful beaches with rustic environment, privacy and quietness, and
tropical plantations and high mountains of Sierra Madre, mysterious archeological zones, as Izapa, famous
for its sculptures, and the possibility of alternative tourism in coffee farms, one of the most important
economic lines of Chiapas. Tapachula, the bigger border city with Central America, near the Suchiate,
provides services to traveler, besides its historical architecture, influenced by Art Deco, faithful reflex
of the prosperity given by coffee at early last century.
HIGH WAVES, SEA BIRDS, MANGROVES & SILENCE...
More than 200 Km long, the sea draws a long line of beaches, interrupted by bar holes, a communication
of estuaries with open sea. A peculiar world composed of sand, high waves and water world, mangrove and
coast salt water lagoons are an amazing part of Chiapas.
The Dead Sea is the biggest coast lagoon, an old albufera. Near the Suchiate are La Joya-Buenavista,
El Mosquito, Chocohuital and Las Palmas, coast lagoons where the rivers drain and never reach the sea.
High waves are in Puerto Arista, beaches with kilometers of fine soft sand, palm trees and vegetation.
Several prices offer calmness and beauty, as Cabeza de Toro, colorful town, next to La Joya lagoon,
Boca del Cielo, Costa Azul beach in Santiago Bar, south east of Puerto Arista, where it is possible
navigate through Cocohuital channels.
Water lilies come and go on water surface depending on waves that increase and decrease the water
saltiness. Mangrove always green cover the channel sides where many animals live, specially water birds,
as spatulas, light pink color, or the pijijes, its name due to the region municipality, Pijijiapan.
The La Encrucijada ecological reserve keeps this environment. Huge mangrove roots provide a way of living
to oysters and other water creatures, and also lodging to reptiles as crocodile and iguana as well as felines
like Ocelot. It also includes the Hueyate zone, an impressive marsh formed by discharge of Huixtla
Despoblado rivers spreading several kilometers as a water sheet. There are papyrus, palm trees and many
turtles.
One of the first places inhabited by human was Chantuto littoral in Chiapas. Traces of this town are tiny
shells masses, integrated to the landscape as aisle inside the mangroves. Between La Encrucijada and
Puerto Madero, Chiapas high port, are beaches keeping its natural charm, like San Jose Bar, where
Huehuetan river drains, and another one, San Simon. The littoral is a very narrow band, in its back the
coast plain formed by the constant materials carried by the rivers going down the Sierra Madre.
A great deal of people and cultures, from Olmecas to today's travelers, Aztecs, Spanish conquerors, headed
by Pedro de Alvarado have passed through it; this region communicates the Tehuantepec Isthmus to
Central America; cacao, quetzal precious feathers, obsidian and jade have past through it.
Traces recently discovered indicate the first agricultural societies, previous to Olmecas developed in
Mazatan zone. Some archeologists have called mokaya, corn people in Mixe-Zoque, this people that
seem to have developed a leadership structure. They established on the coast plain 3,700 years ago,
whose migration to the gulf of Mexico could have originated the Olmeca culture.
