Mexican Spanish Stories
El río sin sol
The Sunless River
Ten years ago he left his best friend in a flooded passage eight hundred meters underground.
Now the expedition that lost him has found a way past Sump Nine: a river that could make the Huautla cave system the deepest in the world. They need the best cave diver in Mexico, and that is Matías Ferrer. With Amalia Carrera, a Mazatec biologist who can whistle her language from mountain to mountain, he goes back down, just as a tropical storm hits the sierra and the cave begins to fill.
- Languages
- Spanish & English
- Reading level
- B1-B2
- Length
- 12 chapters
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A short sample from the opening
Capítulo 1: Huautla entre la niebla
Chapter 1: Huautla in the Fog
El autobús de Teotitlán tardó tres horas en subir las curvas de la Sierra Mazateca, y en las tres horas Matías Ferrer no vio el sol ni una vez. La niebla entraba por las ventanillas mal cerradas, se pegaba a los vidrios, envolvía los cafetales y los techos de lámina como algodón mojado. Cuando por fin bajó en la plaza de Huautla de Jiménez, con su mochila de buzo al hombro, eran las cinco de la tarde y parecía que estaba amaneciendo.
The bus from Teotitlán took three hours to climb the curves of the Sierra Mazateca, and in those three hours Matías Ferrer didn’t see the sun once. The fog came in through the badly closed windows, clung to the glass, wrapped the coffee plantations and the metal roofs like wet cotton. When he finally got off in the plaza of Huautla de Jiménez, with his diving bag on his shoulder, it was five in the afternoon and it looked like dawn.
Hacía diez años que no volvía. Diez años desde que salió de esa misma plaza en una camioneta de la Cruz Roja, junto a una bolsa negra donde iba Andrés, su compañero de buceo, su mejor amigo. Andrés se había quedado sin aire en un sifón a ochocientos metros bajo tierra, en la oscuridad total, a quince metros de Matías. Matías había jurado no regresar nunca. Y aquí estaba, porque una llamada de dos minutos lo había convencido de lo contrario.
He hadn’t been back in ten years. Ten years since he had left that same plaza in a Red Cross truck, next to a black bag that held Andrés, his diving partner, his best friend. Andrés had run out of air in a sump eight hundred meters underground, in total darkness, fifteen meters from Matías. Matías had sworn never to come back. And here he was, because a two-minute phone call had convinced him otherwise.
This is a short excerpt. The full novella has 12 chapters.
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