Jess the Blogging Wiz-Kid!

For those of you stressed and frustrated that my blog has been taking too long to update, which, even by my standards it has, I invite you to view Jessica's blog. Hers, for some reason, is fairly current. If you don't know it already it is jessandhootiegotomexico.blogspot.com. I hope you enjoy and I still will do my part of blogging, it will just be behind schedule a bit, but please keep checking in once in a while. Much love, Hootie.

All Aboard!! Riding the Chepe through Copper Canyon

After our exciting ride back from Batopilas, it was ALL ABOARD, the Chepe. This is the train the goes from Chihuahua all the way to Los Mochis, which is on the coast, it might even go beyond that I am not certain. There are two versions of the train, the primera class (first class) and the economica class. They run at different times and have different number of stops with the economica class having more. The a/c is supposed to be better on the primera class and there is also a bar car. The cost for the primera class is almost double that of the economica and it goes to the exact same places. Unfortunately for us the day we had to take the train was on a Wednesday and the economica class does not run on Wednesdays. So we had to cough up the dough and we made sure that we took full advantage of what the primera class had to offer, especially the Bar Car. We made sure of it!

This little boy we saw at different time in Creel. Here he was one last time trying to sell us some beads and things before we got on the Chepe. These kids don't let up. He was super cute though.

All Aboard!!! A little chaotic trying to get on the train, but we managed.

Ah the Chepe logo. In the red circle you see a sandal on a foot. Perhaps strange to have a foot with a sandle representing a train. Ah, but the symbolism of the foot and sandal. Our take on it is that is is a foot of the Tarahumara, who are known to be fast and endurance runners. Now doesn't that make a bit more sense. The Chepe will get you there and fast. Nice idea but not always the case.

An amazing view from Divisadero, a quick stop with a view. The Chepe stops here for 15 minutes so tourist like us can get a good view. For those who are rolling in the dough there are some nice hotels here. This view has a price for sure. Also at this stop as soon as you get off the train you are accosted by food vendors and trinket sales people, offering you some cheep food, which you must scarf down rather quickly as you are to not bring your own food on the train. The trinket sales folk make it almost difficult to get to the view point and back to the train in time before it leaves and they are wanting to sell you all that they have, "And for you I have good price, special for you, only today, 250 pesos."

We stopped off in a town called Areponápuchi, Arepo for short. We had read that this is a don't miss spot on the train line. This is one of the only stops that has a town that is a real town, more like a village on it. Boy did we luck out. We decided last minute to get off. We had no idea where we were going to stay, only had read that there are places on the cheaper side. There is also the really expensive, with hotels and views rivaling that of Divisadero, which was only about 5km away. Well we got off, walked down the street aways and kept asking people (Jess kept asking people) about Cabañas. People kept pointing further down the road until we found this place which was a super good find. Not only was it fairly inexpensive, there was a trail in back of our room that let to the edge of the Copper Canyon rim. It was a five minute walk and we had those expensive views all to ourselves with numerous trails going down into the canyon. The owners of the cabañas, Monica and Roy, were very nice and they served our meals in their home at the dinning room table. Monica is a great cook and we had fish for the first time in Mexico, delicious!

A local house of a Tarahumara family, this family obviously not living in a cave. They watched us from the window as we walked by, probably wondering "what the hell are these white folks doing all the way out here." It is a small couple of houses but what a view.

Might be hard to see but there is a house (casa) belonging to a Tarahumara family below these peaks. Another sweet spot for a home.

Chilling on the canyon rim, this is what you get!

A nice stone wall with an interesting turn style gate, allowing us smart humans to maneuver through it yet keeping the not so smart goats in bounds. Also notice the hiking poles Jess is using. As of Nov. 17th this has been the only time they got used. Glad I carried these poles and all our camping gear across this country. The camping gear still have yet to be used :(


On our way out of Arepo. Jess is sporting the double backpack approach.




The little church for the town of Arepo.

For some reason I wanted to include this picture of a woman selling baskets on the train tracks.


This would be a hard photo to take since I was riding the train. It is a photo of a photo, but this is what the train looks like in action.

Brace yourselves for some beautiful photos of an amazing area, Copper Canyon as seen from the Bar Car of the Chepe Train.

I think this is the bridge from that previous photo of a photo.

Here we noticed the river began to have much less gradient, my thinking was that there was a dam down stream and the water was backing up.

A beautiful spot the train stopped for a few minutes so us gapers could gape.

Gaping away!

There definitely was a dam and a pretty huge reservoir too. I believe this was used for a water source and for hydro-power to the surrounding areas.

Like I said before, we were in the BAR CAR!

A majestic view of the reservoir and the mountains around.

And a final shot of the mighty Chepe as we headed off into the sunset and for the town of
El Fuerte.

Death Ride To Batopilas

Have you ever experienced shear terror, no control over the situation and your survival was based on solely on faith in a bus driver you don't even know? Well I have and it was on our ride down to Batopilas. The forecast was for rain, sometimes they close the road to Batopilas when it rains too much. That Monday morning the bus was still scheduled to go, so we went for it. Holy Crap was it scary, the most frightening ride of my life and it only cost 200 pesos. It would have been scary had there been no rain but all the more excitement and terror! The road, only wide enough for our bus, crawled down the canyon and then aways through till we got to our destination.

Just the Beginning of going down.

Shear drop offs, not for the faint of heart.

Drivers little helper, removing debris form the road so we could pass.

Even with the rain, the experience was amazing.

View of town upon our arrival.

When we got to town we first got a place to stay in a house that had a couple of rooms owned by a nice couple who spoke English. Unfortunately for us, it was right along the river which was flowing at biblical proportions due to the heavy rains. At night trying to calm Jess down my quote went something like this, "We're going to be fine. We're at the bottom of the deepest canyon in North America, it's been raining for two days, the river is flooding, the road may get washed out. We're going to be fine." Well that night we had our bags packed and ready to go if the water crept over the crumbling wall of the house we were staying at. It did not, but we stayed at a different place the following night, more for creature comforts like, a/c and a bathroom without the shower head pointing at the toilet.

If you can read it, its cool. "The Man and the Woman"

We found a guide named Arturo, perhaps a common name in this area. He spoke very little English, I speak very little Spanish, good thing we have Jessica! He brought us on a tour of some of the local sites, the first one being an old mission that was built and abandoned and then use by Jesuits coming to the area for their missionary work. An interesting note, the woman who was the care taker of the church for many years, she, along with her family, are buried underneath the floor of the church. The church now is under renovations and is being used by the locals.

View of Mission de Satevo from afar.

Mission de Satevo... can't you read.

Jess looking cute at the mission, what a back drop!

A view of town from across the Rio Batopilas

This is how we got across the Rio Batopilas

Jessica and our guide Arturo in front of the mine of San Miguel.

Ruins of San Miguel's property.

Dondé esta el baño? Aqui!

Mas Ruinas

The Aqueduct built by the former Governor of Washington D.C., Alan Sheppard, who came to this area and helped spiff it up a bit, allowing it to be the second place in all of Mexico to get electricity.

Our favorite restaurant in this town was called Belia's. A lot of people leave their business cards underneath the plastic table cloth. I guess I am no different.


Click on this one and get an idea of our location.

Oh yeah baby, Batopilas truly will be with me for the rest of my life, just getting there was worth the experience not to mention the beauty we found when we got there. Thankfully the weather cleared up on us and we found ourselves safe and at the bottom of a beautiful canyon.
For the small size of the town we found it interesting how many nice trucks and even some Hummers we saw there. That could be due to what drives the local economy. Lets just say it is a perfect climate for growing certain types of plants and that we also saw some military folks busting through town going after some of those "plantations".
The ride out was almost as exciting as the way in but with out the rain. The scariest part was when there was a truck, abandoned on the side of the road was unmovable and preventing our passage or so we thought, but our faith in the Bus driver prevailed. He was able to squeeze past the truck with the bus, just enough as to not slip off the cliff we were driving on. I will say this, when he made that move Jess, myself and none of the Mexican stayed on the bus. We got in after he made the move and with our applause's. Although it was beautiful I tried to sleep off a little of the terror, we also had to be up at four a.m. to catch the bus. So I caught some Z's and we eventually made it back to Creel where we were to catch the Chepe train as we continued to go through the rest of Copper Canyon.

The Vortex Of Creel

After a five and a half hour bus ride and again, getting confused exactly where our stop was we arrived in Creel. Creel is a small town that is the starting off point for travellers who want to experience the wonders of Copper Canyon, north America's deepest canyon. It is actually a series of five canyons that come together.

Creel offers several places to stay, we found ourselves at Casa de Margharita's, a back packers hostel. For 250 pesos we got a nice clean room and bathroom, also including a meal. They offered tours and really try to get you to take them, almost pressuring you to take them. Jess and I on the other hand did things our way and did some self touring.

The Hostel was nice and we were able to meet some great folks traveling in the area as well. We met a crew from Texas that worked trail crew in Big Bend National Park, they were here for the Columbus day weekend. We met up with them at first in the one bar that Creel has to offer, Tia Molcas and then saw them the following days we spent there as well. There was also the lone New Zealander, the couple from the UK and another lone traveller from Denver, who is travelling as far south as he can till his money is gone. Everyone has their story and around the dinner table and over a beer it is great to hear all of them. I can't forget to mention Arturo, the Hostel manager guy,he was pretty awesome, he loves Oreo Cookie ice cream and I can totally relate.

Branching out on our own, Jess and I did not succumb to the tours offered by the hostel. They are the same tours that every place else offers as well, so we did our shopping and decided to rent some mountain bikes and check out the local sites on our own.

The bikes were descent, rented from the 3 Amigos tour company for about 90 pesos for a half day, that was all we needed to get our mission done. We headed out of town to do a 20 km loop. Our first stop was at some cave dwelling of some local Tarahumara Indians. These are the native people of the area, reminding me much of the Quechua people I encountered in Peru. These people are some of the fastest and most enduring runners in the world, not the ones we encountered though. But they are known to literally chase their prey till their prey tires and then they go for the kill, sometimes with their bare hands. The ones we did encounter were in their homes which are cave dwellings in the rocks of the area, lots of rocks and caves in this area.

They are in fact very poor people living very simple lives, doing what needs to be done for daily survival. I pondered if I ever could give up the world I know and live a life like this, it would be tough for sure. They are also known at least to the tourists, for their handy crafts and weaving abilities, so almost any were you come into contact with them they have some thing for sale, some craft of some kind and usually pretty cheep. And then there are the cutest little kids that run up to you and say, ¨un peso, un peso?¨

Moving on... we visited an old mission, San Ignacio. It was a satelite church for the area that did not have its own priest but instead priests would go out and visit the local people so that they could have some place to worship their new found God.





In the same are as the Mission were two areas of rock formations, the Valleyof Mushrooms, And the valley of the Frogs. Yep you guessed it the rocks looked like mushrooms and frogs, pretty exciting.

Jess getting eaten by a giant Rock Frog!!!







About another 5km from there we got to another area of rocks known as the Valley of the Monks, but unlike the other rock valleys we visited I would not say monks would describes these rocks. As it was mentioned in our Lonely Planet guide, it was more like the valley of Erect Penises. Either way it was a really cool area and we had a great lunch of tortillas and Jess's homemade Guacamole. Our bike adventure took us to the lago Arareka. This in the past was a natural spring that got dammed up in the fifties to give Creel a water supply which to this day has never been use as a water supply. The name Arareka supposedly was the Tarahumara word for horseshoe, as the lake looks like a horseshoe but Arturo from the hostel told me it was the Tarahumara name of a flower that was at the site of the spring, a beautiful yellow flower that no longer exists.

Our days adventure ended by heading back to Creel, returning the bikes, grabbing a meal and catching up with our new amigos from the hostel. The night concluded with a visit to a group of Tarahumaras who were celebrating their founding father in this area that died a long time ago. Part of this ritual that they do, which happens once a year on the aniversary of his death, is that they drink some form of alcoholic drink made from corn and some eat peyote and everyone dances all night, seriuosly all night and into the morning, and to the sound of some really bad fiddle playing. They wore elaborate colored costumes with head dresses or something like that. Their everyday clothes are pretty vibrant colored as well. It was interesting to see this event, but after about twenty minutes you got the gist of it. That night ended with Arturo convincing a few of us to play Yahtzee with him instead of going out to the bar. I think it was a ploy so that we would spend our money on beers from the hostel, which is smart on his behalf.

That next day in Creel was Sunday, and as I had been checking out some of the local religions and traditions of people I thought it would be nice to accompany Jessica to church, and that is what we did. We put on our travellers Sunday best, for me it was a pair of sneakers, my Colombia titanium quick drying pants, and a long sleeve shirt I got in NZ, which is light weight and drys quick as well.
The rest of that morning was a necessary lazy morning. That afternoon we rented a guide to take us out to a large waterfall in the area about an hours drive away, called Cusarare. Our guides name was Manuel and he was pretty funny, I couldnt understand all that he said, as it was in Spanish, but his mannerisms and body language proved enough to make me laugh and have a good time, and of course I had Jessica to fill me in on what I didn't quite grab. The interesting thing about our trip to the waterfall was that Manuel, our guide, stoped by his house on the way out of town, at his house he picked up his son. Manuel is in his seventies and his son, his fifties. His son is mentally challenged and it was good that he was able to get out of the house. He proved to be quite entertaining for us, not really being able to carry a conversation but like a parrot singing phrases back to us, ¨No, problema, no problema.¨

The night ended with some Helados (ice cream), and a beer at the bar, saying good bye to our hostel friends as we all were headed in different directions the next morning. So on Monday Jess and I finally escaped the vortex of Creel and caught a local bus to Batopilas, an old mining town at the bottom of Copper Canyon. It was the second town in all of Mexico to actually receive electricity, strange fact there, but Holy Shit the ride down there........