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.