Tapijulapa

I arrived in Tapijulapa expecting to spend an afternoon. I had a colectivo booked for the following morning and a mental list of things I still needed to do in Villahermosa, which is to say I had no real reason to stay. Then I walked the cobblestones down to the river bend, found a plastic chair outside a comedor with a direct line of sight to the Oxolotán, and ordered a plate of pejelagarto without quite deciding to. That was three days ago. The colectivo left without me.

The Village and the River

The cobblestone loop in Tapijulapa takes about twenty minutes to walk at a reasonable pace. I walked it perhaps a dozen times over three days, always finding some excuse — the light was different, I hadn’t yet identified where the old women bought their tortillas at seven in the morning. The Río Oxolotán curves below the village in a way that forces the buildings to angle toward it, as if the architecture made a collective decision to pay attention to the water. In the early evening the river goes a particular shade of copper that I kept trying to photograph and never managed to capture correctly. The Parroquia de Santiago Apóstol sits at the top of the slope — whitewashed, understated, built for a congregation that didn’t need to impress anybody. Lanchas take you upriver for a few pesos; I took one twice, watching the vegetation close over the water and thinking that Tabasco looked entirely different from here than it did from the highway between Villahermosa and Palenque.

Coconá, Then the Springs

The Grutas de Coconá are a fifteen-minute walk from the plaza — uphill, so I’d recommend starting before noon. The cave system is modest by Yucatán standards, but the stalactites here feel intimate rather than theatrical, lit just adequately, which is the right call. On a Tuesday morning the only other visitors were one couple and a guide who seemed genuinely uncertain why anyone from Oaxaca had made the trip. Villa Luz is another matter. The sulfurous springs discharge into the Oxolotán and create conditions that endemic fish — puyeque, mostly — have learned to inhabit by feeding on the sulfur-eating bacteria in the water. The springs smell exactly as advertised. During the annual Pesca de Robalo festival in May, the whole region arrives to fish in this same water. On the Wednesday I visited, I had the banks to myself. The fish had no explanation for me, and I had none for them.

The Comedor on the Corner

The best meal I had in Tapijulapa came from a comedor whose name I never learned — on the corner nearest the river, run by a woman who appeared to offer two dishes: pejelagarto en salsa verde and soup. I had both, in that order, over two separate visits. Pejelagarto is an alligator gar, a prehistoric-looking fish that lives in Tabasco’s rivers and that locals prepare in a way that makes the mild funkiness work rather than fight it. I also drank pozol from a plastic cup at one of the market stalls near the plaza — the fermented corn-and-cacao drink that Tabasco treats as a birthright. It requires adjustment if you arrive expecting chocolate. What it is, in practice, is something between sustenance and acquired habit, and I acquired the habit by day two.

Getting There

The nearest hub is Villahermosa, roughly two hours by road. Colectivos leave from the Mercado Pino Suárez area toward Tacotalpa; shared taxis continue from Tacotalpa into the village. The dry season — November through April — is more comfortable for the hill walks and cave visits. In the rainy season the river runs full and dramatic, but the roads toward Villa Luz can be unpredictable.