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.