Part 3: Mexico's Copper Canyon

Morning air in the mountains is crisp and cool.  We dress in warm jackets, mitts and hats and set off for a pre-breakfast walk, accompanied by one of the hotel dogs.  We walk north and find a path going up the hill behind the hotel.  The slope is well treed with many varieties of pine and oak.  Though the path is not steep, I am soon gasping for breath.  The change from sea-level to an altitude of 7800 feet has my eyes pulsing with my extra-stressed heart.

We eat breakfast in front of the oak embers of last night's fire, then get a ride to 3 Amigos where we meet Salvador.  We decide to have an easy day to give us a chance to acclimatize to the altitude, so decide to take the tour which goes back to Divisadero. After Salvador phones the guide, we talk about our interest in birds.
"You have the perfect guide.  I'll call Noel back and see he brings his bird book."

Little do we know what a gem we have as our guide. In appearance Noel  is short and compact with plenty of silver and gold on his teeth. With his head to one side, hands in pockets, he seems at first a little shy and diffident.  He has no reason to be.  He speaks  clear and idiomatic English and his knowledge of birds, their song, their flight patterns, their behaviours, their names in English Spanish and Latin is quite something .  As we set off toward Divisadero he gives room for those of us eager to speak Spanish, and he's an excellent teacher.

He tells us about the Raramuri who live in the canyons.The Raramuri live sometimes in caves and sometimes in houses of wood or stone chinked with mud.   The canyon floor is in a sub tropical climate zone, so an ideal place for them to live in winter.  In summer they migrate to higher land where they raise their principal crop, maize, along with beans and squash.  Some keep chickens and goats. 

Moving up and down the canyon walls is part of their everyday life and as a result they are extremely athletic.  Their running ability is coming to the notice of the modern world, both in athletic circles and the drug trade, which makes use of Raramuri men to transport drugs out of the canyons.

Noel tells us the Raramuri are shy and do not want charity or to be drawn into the western style of life.  The were persecuted by the Spanish, and have survived thanks to their chosen isolation. We stop at the Oteros box canyon where a Raramiro woman has crafts for sale. Smiles are not exchanged as a matter of course.  I buy a tortoise carved from the bark of a Ponderosa pine, and Lori tries to converse using words from her brochure.  It is perplexing, this interface between cultures.  Should one try to communicate?  Could this go against their desire for separateness?  If they find us likable, will they want more contact with others "like" us and what will this mean for them?  This is something we ponder as we have more contact through the next few days.

In Divisidero we eat stuffed gorditas at one of the many food stalls then have a good look at all the crafts set out for sale.  One of the Raramuri women holds a child perhaps three years old, with an horrific hare lip.  Teeth grow this way and that in the exposed gums. The sight of this grotesque little face is immeasurably sad.

Our next stop is the brand new cable car, the teleferico, which has been in operation for 5 months.  Top engineering and technology have created a cable system with no secondary supports, one and a half miles long.  This costs 200 pesos per person, free for guides and Raramuri.  My head for heights being severely challenged, I perhaps don't enjoy the views as much as my companions, but once on the pinnacle known as the Eagle's Nest, with my feet firmly on earth, I can marvel at the  complex of Urique, Copper and Tararecue canyons. We are followed by a 12 year old Raramuri, her little sister on her hip.  She wears the classic sandals consisting of soles laced with thongs which wrap many times above the ankle, and she is perfectly sure footed on the rough terrain.  Noel said she  no doubt hiked up  from a cave far below, and was just friendly - didn't want money at all.  I suspect she found us interesting, objects of curiosity.


A zip liner comes across the chasm and travels on the return trip with us.  I feel more relaxed and can take in the bricked caves and other free-standing homes and tiny corn fields on canyon shelves.   As we near the station we see climbing aids set in the rock wall.  This really is a world class facility which will be extended further in coming years.



We walk along the rim, getting to know the local trees.  The Madron and the Manzanita shrub are particularly striking with their red bark.  A lame scruffy black dog who has adopted Andrew thanks to a proffered lettuce leaf, accompanies us on a steep walk to a high plateau where there is a circle of stones used for the Raramuri games.  The evening light on this grassy peninsular of rock jutting out above the canyon is magical.

We are all dropping with sleep on the drive back to Creel.  We eat our evening meal in a fine little restaurant called Veronica's.  Unfortunately we are assailed by musical atrocities so bad that when the perpetrator passes around his hat, we cannot support his delusion by tossing in so much as a peso.

Part 2: Copper Canyon

The squeaks of a resident geko and the crows of roosters communicating over a wide radius, bring the comfort of the African night of our early years back to Buz and I. The morning dawns alive with birds. Andrew is the first out with his binoculars, enchanted with hummingbirds sipping at feeders around the breakfast tables. He spots a Tiger-Heron on the river bank. The trees are filled with bird song. A sheep and four goats feed from their new hay bale beneath the balcony.

The train station is some distance from the town. It is little more than a waiting room and tickets have to be purchased on the train. We buy maps and a book on the canyon from an itnerant saleswoman and examine these as we wait in the sun.

Boarding the train has all the thrill of journey's past, and memories of Botswana and South Africa come to mind as we pass through rocky hills, savannah dotted with mixed breed, long-horned cattle. We park our luggage and talk to an Australian couple who are on a whirwind trip taking in Chihuahua, Acupulco and Cuba. Sitting in the bar with its wide windows and panoramic views we notice the hills become steeper with more cacti, then we cross our first long bridge, then a tunnel and we are into the Copper Canyon System.

We go through tunnel after tunnel, bridge after bride, gazing at high canyon walls and dramatic jutting rock formations. On the route to the city of Chihuahua there are 73 tunnels and 23 major bridges. Work began on El Chepe railway in the early Twentieth Century and was only completed in the 1960s. The engineering is impressive. At one point the tracks make a gyre-like loop, rising all the time. We see the rails we have just travelled upon, now far below. At San Rafael we see our first Tarahumari or Raramuri as they call themselves. Unsmiling women gaze open eyed at us, holding baskets up for sale. They are made from fresh pine needles. The sweet aroma lingers.

The train stops for 15 minutes at Divisadero where there is a market beside the train station. There are stalls where women sell aromatic gorditas, plump corn tortillas sliced and filled. Other display baskets, shawls, dolls, necklaces and wood carvings. Buz finds just the walking stick he has been looking for. We make our way through the vendors and stand at a railing at the top of a precipitous drop. Interlinking canyons stretch away into the distance. The system is much younger than the Grand Canyon, and rather than bare canyon walls, the less steep canyon sides here are carpeted with vegetation. An estimated 70,000 Raramuri live in homes, often caves in the canyons, farming on patches of somewhat level ground and terraces in much the same way they have done for aeons, giving a human element to this inspiring lanscape.

When we disembark at Creel, countless tour and lodge reps bombard us. We had made a plan that Lori and I would sit in the plaza with our luggage while the men look for a place to stay, so we leave the hussle behind. Sadly on our arival in the plaza an elderly tour rep makes an utter nissance of himself and won't leave us alone. A younger man comes out of the tour's kiosk and apologises for him, but not before we have become thoroughly irritated. The old man sits on the bench opposite us, making lip-taping getures. We fume. A truck stops, and the woman driver who could be his wife, talks to him. How can anyone live with this mosquito of a man? Though the sun is warm, the shade is cool. When Andrew and Buz arrive in a truck, we jump right in, ready to accept anything - for a night.

We spend four nights at Pueblo Viejo which is a collection of pine and stone buildings set into a rocky hillside. There is something eccentric about the place. Buildings have names: Buz and I are housed in La Cueva. There is a jail and even a mock twin-spired church. There are three dogs, two cats and countless collectables: many of what might be called meat grinders but which are also used for milling corn, all rowed up on window ledges. There are sewing machines, wood stoves, plough parts, wagon wheels, saddles, hide stretchers and two chrome yellow Ford trucks, vintage 1950 and 1951.

There is a central kitchen besdie an elegant restaurant with a double-faced fireplace. Through the kitchen is a cantina which has more memorabilia: musical instruments, Raramuri baskets, and photos taken by the Playboy crew who visted four years ago. In one, a provocatively posed modle kneels in front of the fireplace where we eat an evening meal prepared specially for us: beef ribs sliced against the grain and seared on iron plates laid on the coals. The meat is simply delicious, having no flavoring other than salt.

The owner and builder of Pueblo Viejo, Xavier, is expansive and canny. Times are tough in the tourist industry everywhere in Mexico but even more so in the canyons where drug cartels are rumoured to have their secret grow ops. Xavier is full of good intentions, but it takes several requests before we get hot water in our shower. The water runs brown with rust. There seem to be no other guests, though he talks of a large group of 20 or 30 arriving tomorrow. He brings out his guitar and it is clear he has not played for a while. He wants to sing romantic songs but can't remember the words. He smiles when Lori sings Romeo come home.

"You write and sing what's right for your voice," he says. Then he plays a rousing Mexican song with Paulo, his toothless sidekick, doing the vocals.

Earlier, when we sat in the evening sun, listening to the sounds of geese from a neighbouring farm, a Canadian woman we met on the train walked through the gateway looking for the San Ignacio Mission. She had seen the mock church spires and hoped this was it. She was amazed to hear we were from Saskatchewan.

"I just met a couple on the train from there," she said.

How travel disorientates, re- orientates us, concertinaing time, bringing past to present, tossing memory into shimmers of bubbles catching the light. All is open, anything is possible.

Part 1: Mexico's Copper Canyon visit March 2011

The bus cruises north from Mazatlan, through hills covered with thick mixed scrub forest. There are patches of yellow and mauve where a few tree species are flowering before their spring leaves come in. We pass orchards of trees brown-leaved from the extreme cold weather which slunk into northern Mexico two weeks ago.

We are on our way to Mexico's Copper Canyon, El Barranca del cobre, four friends who came together thanks to the internet: Buz and I from Canada and Andrew and Lori from San Francisco. Throughout the coming days I find myself grateful for a travelling companion who has no compunction about asking questions. Lori's first inquiry with the bus driver, clears an uncomfortable mystery which had us wondering if some constipated body was contorted in the washroom. A key is required!

Non-stop movies are a feature of high-end buses here and action movie sound effects assail our ears as a serene mountain range appears to our east. The blue of agave plantations contrasts with rich green irrigated fields. After Culiacan we go through a pass, all ochre and grey rock faces and hillsides dotted with cactus and grey shrubs.

There is a roadside shrine, and in the outskirts of Guamuchil, police cruisers and a mororcycle on its side. A little further on the road is being widenened and three crosses from a less recent accident, with their drum-like bases of cement, lay on their sides waiting for re-potting.

At Los Mochis we find we have to get to another bus depot, and catch a cab which belches gas fumes into our lungs but gets us to the El Fuerte bus just in time. We climb aboard and find ourselves in totally different travelling circumstances. A cheery fellow tosses chocolate bars on everyone's lap. Freebees? Gifts? Oh, no. The vendor returns to collect payment, and the passengers who don't want them, hand the bars back. A smart marketing ploy. Buz pays for his.

The bus seems to be run by a family - Dad drives, Mom collects the fares and son carries people's bags and rides shotgun on a seat by the door. Cheerful banda music plays and people get on and off frequently. This is a country-style commuter bus, with many regular passengers greeted warmly as they ride home from work.

We are unsure where to get off as we enter El Fuerte, but noticing that everyone but us is disembarking on a shady street, we figure this is as much of a bus depot as we are going to see. A cab takes us up the steepest road imaginable to Rio Vista, the lodge recommended to us by Yolanda of 3 Amigos, the most helpful tour operators we could have wished for. Birds are on all our trip wish lists and Rio Vista has the top guide.

A castle-like fort and the graceful curve of the river take our breath away. Our rooms look out on this? We sit overlooking a magical landscape while bats pour out of the castle walls and into the twilight. We eat out doors: langoustine and black bass. Then on to planning our itinerary. We have ten days and know for sure that Creel, in Chihuahua, will be our first base. To end our trip we want to spend at lease one full day in El Fuerte. We trust the train journey and the experiences of those we meet will help us decide the stops in between.