Country: Mexico
State: Morelos
Las Estacas, a deep paradise
by Milagros Reynaldo
Natural Acuatic Park Las Estacas
offers visitors beautiful places that
invite you to rest or to take an
incredible field trip.
You can also practiceattractive
sports, such as swimming, diving,
or cavalcade. Its tourist
infrastructure allows you to camp,
enjoy a long stay in any of its
lodgingoptions: bungalows, the
ecological villa Fuerte Bambu, a
trailer park withfull services, and
huts with charming rusticity.
Young people having fun in the bubbling that gives way to the river Las Estacas. Water sprouts at 23ºC.
To know the river and its most intimate parts, we headed towards a bubbling with a spherical luminosity, in the bed itself, which resembles a corrugated mirror where the branches of trees, the clouds, and the bathers seem to fight for a space.
Here we boarded a raft that took us downstream.
We went across a tall tunnel of intertwined branches, out of which a few frightened bats not less frightened than us flew out, challenging the light of day. We were taken along the stream to a wooded backwater, and here the river gave the impression of pausing to take delight in the beauty surrounding it, a beauty only seen in movies. The dense vegetation gives a different color to the sunrays and provokes a great richness of chiaroscuros; the magic of the place captured us.
The place is known as Rincón Brujo and it has been the scenery of some Mexican movies such as El Rincón de las Vírgenes with Alfonso Arau, and American movies like Wild is the Wind with Anthony Quinn and Gregory Peck. The place was also used, long before that, by Emiliano Zapata to rest and give water to his thirsty horse.
A leafy, millenary Mexican fig tree grows in the inner edge of Rincón Brujo; its powerful, aired roots have formed some sort of a bridge between both ends of the river, which at this point, narrows and becomes a rivulet. A number of caverns have been dug to let the river slide and reach the dilated space of the sections called Poza Chica and La Isla.
Starting here, the affluent continues its zigzagging course, where fish and turtles of different sizes can be seen and, in its bed, dozens of spring waters, like little suns, can be admired.
The soul of Natural Park Las Estacas, in the State of Morelos, Mexico, is the river by the same name. In its bed, throughout more than a sinuous kilometer, like a breeding ground for small suns, is the birth of dozens of spring waters. The biggest is a bubbling that gives way to the most abundant of which seven thousand liters of water spring every second. The second section of the river, known as RincOn Brujo (witch corner), with exuberant vegetation, has been the background of Mexican and North American movies and, long before, it was the favorite site of the peasant leader Emiliano Zapata to rest and give water to his thirsty horse.

The spectacle of crystal, light emerald waters with silver reflections can be enjoyed by letting yourself go with the current or walking down the river banks escorted by more than three thousand palm trees. The palm trees, in spite of their Caribbean origin, live in perfect harmony with the millenary Mexican fig trees and other native trees in the region.
A view of Poza Chica, one of the beautiful corners of the river.
Family fun in the river.
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