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huasteca

I Finally Crashed My Drone…In Mexico

by Matt Leave a Comment

For those of you who followed the massive 150-day multimedia road trip across Canada, I put together in 2017, you’ll know that I had a drone. A drone was never something I intended to buy but after seeing one being advertised, and knowing I had this big road trip ahead of me, I went ahead and bought it. The only downfall of buying the drone was learning about all the restrictions that Transport Canada recently placed on them. Basically, I needed approval from each and every region we were visiting, local approvals, and really expensive drone insurance…$900 for the year to be exact. To put that into perspective, the drone itself was just over $1,000.

By the time the drone had arrived, I had just around two weeks left at home before departing for Newfoundland to begin the trip. I knew I wouldn’t be able to become a pro in such a short amount of time but I did manage to get outside for a few practice shots before using it to capture footage for the Road to 150. All in all, it was a GREAT investment as it really added production value to the videos and allowed us to score some BEAUTIFUL aerial shots of some of Canada’s most stunning landscapes. I also became a pretty good drone pilot along the way and even rescued the drone from a couple of close calls, one of which was in Newfoundland.

 

By the time the adventure was over, I had about 100 flights under my belt and felt pretty confident about operating the drone. Overall, I’m a very responsible person anyways and so I always followed all the rules and was pretty conservative with it. After all, I wasn’t about to buy a new one if I had crashed it and I really wanted to complete the trip with as many drone shots as we could get.

Guanajuato Mexico by Drone
Aerial Views of Guanajuato, Mexico
Acapulco Mexico by Drone
Aerial View of Acapulco, Mexico

With this newfound confidence, I decided to bring it to Mexico for Christmas. My wife is from Mexico City and so we had decided to spent about four weeks down there for the holidays. Although Mexico City in and of itself is a spectacular place to visit, we also decided to go to Acapulco, Guanajuato, and a beautiful jungle paradise called Huasteca. Well, the region is called La Huasteca. The primary reason I wanted the drone in Mexico was to capture the beauty of Huasteca. This place is sooooo beautiful. It’s a relatively unvisited slice of Mexico, in the jungles, surrounded by snaking turquoise rivers and hundreds of waterfalls. There’s also sinkholes (as featured in the series Planet Earth) and surrealistic castles. It reminds of the movie Avatar. I really wanted to make a video on the whole area.

However, since Huasteca was our last place on the schedule, I first brought the drone to Acapulco to get some gorgeous beach shots and to Guanajuato to fly it over one of the most beautiful colonial cities in the world. Then, my time finally came for Huasteca. One of my favorite things to do there is to jump off a series of waterfalls. So, we all walked out into the middle of a waterfall and I began flying the drone backward to show us standing in the water and to give the viewer some perspective. Not expecting to fly the drone close to the canyon walls, I kept an eye mostly on the phone to make sure I was capturing the footage I wanted. Maybe because I was already nervous about falling in the water, I forgot to ask my friends to keep an eye on the drone, which is something you should always do. After flying out quite far, I decided to pan across. This is where I made my mistake. With all of us looking at the phone, I wasn’t aware of how close I was getting to the canyon walls. Then, all of a sudden, my friend Ricky looked up to see the drone and yelled out “Bro, you’re gonna crash”. Then, that’s it. My screen went fuzzy and I lost connection. I was in shock. Just like that, my drone was gone. The only one who noticed it, last minute, before it’s fateful crash, was Ricky, and he pointed up to a spot on the cliff, maybe 200 feet above where we were. It was truly gone.

crashed my drone in mexico

Then, a moment of hope. Ricky could still see the drone. I couldn’t see it at all but he said he could see this little white spec clinging on to a tree. The drone was way out of reach and there was no way to climb up there. Still, we all kept the hope and left the waterfalls to go back to the main road and get a better look at where it was. Once we all had an eye on it, we noticed something unbelievable. Just thirty days before we arrived, a company built a zip-line in the area and I had crashed the drone just 2-3 feet away from one of the platforms! I mean, what are the chances! We drove to find the zip-line guys and Ricky went with them on the zip-line to get it. 30 minutes later, they came back with the drone in hand! It was broken, of course, and totally un-useable in its current state, but I had it back, along with all the footage!

Seriously, what are the chances of such a mishap? I crashed the drone on the side of a cliff, maybe 200 feet above a fast-moving river and a series of waterfalls. It was clinging to one little branch where a stroke of wind could have easily knocked it off. Thirty days before my arrival, a company built a zip-line course in that exact area and I just so happened to crash it above one of their platforms. They were working that day so we got them to go and get it. It was broken but totally fixable.

It’s just a crazy story to me, and when I got back to Mexico City, I found a DJI repair shop and had them fix it for $100 CAD. Now it’s as good as new.

The only downfall is that the only footage I got of Huasteca is what you see in the video before I crashed.

Guess I’ll have to go back.

What’s the lesson?

If you’re operating a drone, be very mindful of the surrounding area. You should always have a second person keeping an eye on the drone so that if you’re looking at the image on the phone, they can tell you if any dangers are present. And, if you do crash, don’t be immediately discouraged. You may have simply crashed it on a cliff next to a zip-line. You never know!

Did you like this story? Did you like the video” Say hi in the comments and let me know 🙂

 

Adventures in Huasteca | A Side of Mexico Almost No One Ever Sees

by Matt 2 Comments

I looked down at my watch. Wait, that’s not true. I looked down at my phone. The time was 7 am. We had just reached the bus terminal of Ciudad Valles after a 9-hour evening bus from Mexico City. I had slept maybe 2-hours but was excited to get back into nature and see some awesome friends we hadn’t seen since our university exchange in Malaysia back in 2012. After weeks of traffic and concrete in the world’s second-most-populous city, it was now time for beautiful waterfalls, turquoise waters, and subtropical rainforest hikes.

Ricky and Andrea, two friends of ours that happen to be bamboo architects, and our friends we had come to visit picked us up to go back to their house for breakfast. They had already booked our first adventure, which was just-so-happened river kayaking at 10 am. We ate breakfast, I grabbed an energy drink and we made way to the first of many beautiful tranquil rivers for the following week.

Tumul WaterFall

We joined up with some American kayakers who have a business in Mexico during the winter months. They gave us a rundown on how to operate the kayak and told us we’d be going down class-2 rapids. After paddling around one of the biggest waterfalls in the area, we got started. When the first rapid came, we fell off in an embarrassing fashion. Karla got massive scrapes all the way from her bum to the middle of her leg and I got lucky with just a bruise. Nothing big, though her cuts looked horrible. After that, we got the hang of it and only fell out one more time, thankfully in deeper water. We had only kayaked once before in calm waters so this was a completely new experience and a fun one at that.

It was incredibly scenic. The water was a light blue. The sky was blue. The jungle ferns draped over the edges and had an almost “Indiana Jones” feel to it. Mini waterfall after mini waterfall, we made our way down the river for a couple of hours, finally disembarking near someone’s farmland, where some other locals had been paid to drop off our vehicles for us.

Success.

tumul waterfall huasteca

After a delicious but greasy lunch of Mexican gorditas, it was time for another waterfall adventure.

This time we were going to be jumping off of nine different waterfalls, starting from a mere 3-meter drop to the biggest drop of the day at 9 meters. Some of them we could slide down like waterslides and after the last one, we had a big surprise waiting for us. We were able to swim behind the waterfall. Crouching down in a cool, dark cave while looking out from behind a powerful waterfall pour down in front of us was as magical an experience as it gets. I wanted to stay for hours and just be in the moment. This was another first for me and definitely something I’d love to do again. After a good five or ten minutes, we crawled to the left and eventually leaped through the waterfall and back into the cold waters.

Over the next week in Huasteca, we never stopped. It was adventure after adventure. We went paddle-boarding for the first time in small ponds and also upriver to see a massive waterfall towering above us. We took the kayaks again to a different river and also paddled upstream to Tamul waterfall, the biggest waterfall in the area. We then said bye to water activities and went hiking through a magical subtropical rainforest to reach a staggering 200-meter sinkhole in the middle of the mountains. This area is famous for sinkholes with the most notable one being the Cave of Swallows, which was featured in BBC’s Planet Earth and many National Geographic articles. We went to the one that almost no one ever sees, which added to the experience of it all.

Huasteca Sinkhole

After spending a night in some beautiful cabins in a small tranquil mountain village, we embarked on another new adventure – mountain climbing. The goal was to see an incredible view from the top but the rain caused too much mist for any view to be seen. Though this was disappointing, it was really cool to strap on a harness with real mountain climbers and make our way up a steep mountain. I was told that I was a natural so who knows – maybe I’ve found a new activity to fall in love with. We then continued on to a surreal castle built by Edward James near the town of Xilitla. This magical place is built into a natural waterfall and was meant to resemble “the Garden of Eden”. All Rocky and I could talk about was designing a liveable town just like this. Paradise.

I love trips like this.

While it wasn’t a new country (I’ve spent about six months in Mexico during the last five years), it was a new area and a place that almost no tourists ever see. The only tourists that make it to this area of Mexico are hardcore adventurers like the kayakers we met from the States. Most opt for major cities or beach resorts.

They are missing out and this could be great for visitors from couples to a great family holiday in Mexico.

This place was like walking into a National Geographic documentary. All the locals are super friendly and not-yet-damaged from mass tourism like those from Cancun and Riviera Maya. It actually reminded me of my time in Asia, driving through tiny villages and farmland and witnessing little villages with happy families. There are so many beautiful cities in Mexico, some of which are vastly unexplored.

Edward James Castle xilitla

After about five months of work and city life, this adventure was just what I needed. Adventure, thrills, good people and the odd bottle of Victoria beer. I tried some new adventure sports and grew as a person, which is just what travel is about, no?

When was the last time you tried something new or had your heart rate increase from excitement? Let me know in the comments – I’d love to hear about it.

My friend Ricky is building incredible bamboo buildings in the Huasteca region and we’re thinking of organizing an adventurous and unique tour in the next year or two. Would you be interested? Leave a comment if you are and you’ll be first in line when they happen.

PS: Don’t forget. I’m going to be releasing a book in 2015 called Limitless Travel. It’s going to be the ultimo travel resource book teaching you how to find the cheapest flights, how to become a travel hacker, all the different modes of transportation, different types of accommodation, best travel gear, and much more. It’ll be free for the first 5 days once released so make sure you sign up here and be the first to know about its release.

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