March 17, 2017
We booked our tour to Copper Canyon with Mex-ECO
Tours. We had arrived in Guadalajara a
day ahead of our group, so were meeting them for the first time on Friday
morning. We had been told to meet the
group in the lobby at 4:15 AM. Dan, the
tour organizer, was there, although no one else showed up until 4:30. It was probably 5:00 by the time we located
the entire group and got loaded into the van.
There were nine of us from the Hotel Morales and an additional six from
the Chapala area were supposed to be collected by a different driver. Unfortunately, he couldn’t locate four of
them and their contact phone number wasn’t working. In the end, they had to reschedule because
they missed the flight to Los Mochis.
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| Chaos in the Guadalajara Airport |
We drove to the Guadalajara airport where we were to catch a
7:00 flight to Los Mochis. Dan
whisked
us through check in, where we were lucky to be part of a group and able to
bypass the general chaos at the ticket counter.
Security went smoothly and we had no trouble getting to the gate in
time. The flight to Los Mochis took
about an hour and a half. The Los Mochis
airport was small and easily navigated.
When we were all finally united and loaded into the bus, our group
numbered only eleven plus Dan, the tour organizer, and Pancho, our guide.
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| Downtown Los Mochis |
We stopped in downtown Los Mochis to eat breakfast. I was interested in the town because my
family had moved from the United States to Los Mochis in 1928 to raise
tomatoes. They hadn’t lived there since
the 30s, but it was interesting to see.
Los Mochis was the bread basket of Mexico. All kinds of fruits and vegetables were grown
there. It looked very much like
California and I could see why my relatives had found it attractive. The agriculture in the area had originally
been developed by an American named Benjamin Johnston who founded the United
Sugar Companies. My father had told me
the family had a connection to the sugar industry and I longed to trace the
connection that I did not doubt was there somewhere.
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| Sinaloa Farmland Outside Los Mochis |
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| Driving to El Fuerte |
It was a two-hour drive from Los Mochis to El Fuerte where
we were to spend the night at the Posada del Hidalgo, a collection of large old
homes that had been converted into a charming 80-room hotel. We passed several groups of Mayo Indians
along the way. As we arrived during
lent, they were all wearing white and sporting fanciful, if somewhat macabre, masks. Wearing these masks in the heat was their idea of doing penance. One of them was disguised as Donald Trump,
with a huge, orange pompadour. It was
quite warm when we arrived and, after three nights with no more than five hours
of sleep, all I wanted was a nap. I
never did get to sleep, but managed to rest for a few hours. Then Betty and I went out and walked to a
café under an arcade bordering the jardin.
We each drank a beer and I had camarones rasurados, which were basically
shrimp ceviche with whole shrimp. Then
we returned to the hotel because I needed to meet my group to go rafting on the
El Fuerte River.
There was nothing exciting about rafting on the El Fuerte
River because there were no rapids and I didn’t get so much as a single
splash. Unfortunately, I had left my
camera in the hotel, having been completely drenched on other rafting
trips. Still, out guide was excellent at
picking out different birds to show us.
A great blue heron followed us most of the way and we saw ducks, egrets,
kingfishers, hawks, osprey, caracaras, and two kinds of vultures. We stopped at one point to visit a sort of
botanical garden planted along the path to some elaborate petroglyphs that had
been carved between 700 B.C. and 1300 A.D.
The path had been planted with Neem trees, which supposedly repelled
mosquitoes. They were much needed
because the mosquitoes were thick and not easily discouraged by repellent.
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| La Posada del Hidalgo in El Fuerte |
After returning to the boat, we drifted down the river past
an island inhabited by 61 white tailed deer and a large picnic ground, before
landing at the bottom of the hill in El Fuerte where a short walk returned us
to our hotel.
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| Our Room in El Fuerte |
I barely had time to change clothes before it was time to
meet our guide for a short walking tour of El Fuerte. Pancho walked us around the square and showed
up the City Hall, original General Store (now a fancy restaurant), and
church. Honestly, I didn’t get much out
of the walk because the jejenes (no seeums) were so terrible that I could think of
nothing except escaping them. I was
interested to learn that the “fort” on top of the hill behind the hotel was of
quite recent construction and had been built to disguise a water storage tank.
We weren’t interested in dinner, but I did go up to the pool
bar to have a glass of wine and watch the Zorro Show. Someone with the
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| Zoro Statue at Posada del Hidalgo |
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| Church in El Fuerte |
name of Diego de la Vega was born in one of the homes which comprise Posada del Hidalgo and they capitalized on this fact to claim that the hotel was the birthplace of Zorro. Every night, they put on a short musical show featuring Zorro and his pretty female companion. “Zorro” sang and they both danced while musicians played Norteno music. It was cute and would have been enjoyable had a group of rude smokers not colonized the table where I was sitting with another non-smoking member of our tour. I was forced to get up and leave.
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| Plaza in El Fuerte |
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| Fake Fort in El Fuerte |
Once again, we had an early start the next day, so I retired
early, but stayed up writing until 10:30 because there was much to chronicle.
March 18, 2017
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| Chepe Train Station at El Fuerte |
Both Betty and I were awake by 5:00 am. I gave up on trying to go back to sleep and
got up at 5:50. Breakfast was at 6:45 in
the dining room where there was a nice buffet.
We loaded into the bus at 7:30 and made a short trip to the very unassuming
El Fuerte station. The train left about
8:00. The Chepe train was operated by
Ferrocarril Mexicano. It was begun in
the late 19
th century to link Texas with the Pacific, but had only
been completed at far as Loreto (Loreto in Chihuahua, not the Loreto in Baja)
before the Panama Canal opened and the project was abandoned. Running a railroad through the mountains and
canyons was deemed to be too difficult.
Finally, the Mexican government decided that the people living in the
Sierra Madre needed to have a means of traveling to Chihuahua or Los Mochis. Work was resumed and the railroad was
completed in November of 1961.
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| The Inside of the Train |
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| Map of the Chepe Railway |
When the government privatized the railroads in Mexico, they
did so with the stipulation that the purchaser would continue to operate the
Chepe train to provide public transport to the Sierra Madre. If you have ever dreamt of taking the train
trip through Copper Canyon, you should do it soon because there is a highway
being built to link Chihuahua with Los Mochis and, when it is completed, the
railroad wants to cancel regular service and run only high end tourist trains
at many times the current price.
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| Reservoir on the El Fuerte River |
The current carriages are a bit run down and the train
travels fairly slowly. Still, it was a
very scenic, four-and-a-half-hour ride to the Bahuichivo. At first we traveled through a forest of
mesquite and cardon cactus. Soon, we
joined the El Fuerte River and followed the canyon up into the mountains. We crossed the Aguas Calientes Bridge and
came to a large reservoir. We continued
to follow the
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| The El Fuerte River |
canyon for another couple of hours, gradually climbing and
enjoying views of the green river and towering cliffs, until we crossed a
bridge and made a 180 degree turn before reaching the Temoris station. Above the station were a couple of railroad
memorials, but we passed them too quickly for me to capture a photograph. Taking photographs from a moving train
involved a lot of luck because I had to press the shutter release slightly
before I wanted to capture a photo and sometimes my timing was off and I got a
shot of a blurry tree or the side of an embankment. Once in a while I recorded something exceptional
by happy accident. It was a crap shoot.
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| Temoris |
After Temoris, the train began to climb and then entered a
937-meter long tunnel called La Pera that made another 180 degree turn inside
the mountain. We continued to climb
until we emerged onto a high plateau of grassland and scattered pine
trees. Cattle were grazing up
there. Another hour brought us to the
Bahuichivo station where we disembarked.
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| The Country Above El Fuerte Canyon |
The Mision hotel sent a van to pick us up from the train and
drive us the twenty minutes to Cerocahui.
We were ravenous upon arrival and ate lunch in the rustic dining room
before locating our rooms. Meals were
included with the hotel rooms because there were no other restaurants in the
tiny town. Our group had rooms together
in one building at the back of the property, across a vineyard from the main
building. Many of us spent a very
pleasant afternoon chatting with Pancho on the veranda. We discussed history and languages and all
kinds of things while sampling a little tequila.
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| The Vineyard at La Mision Hotel |
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| Our Room at La Mision |
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| Classrooms at the Tarahumara Girls' School |
We were due to visit the Tarahumara girls’ school next door
at 4:00 and just before that we heard thunder and it began to rain. It was just a thunder shower and didn’t last
long, although it sprinkled on and off for the next couple of hours and the
black clouds blotted out the sun, causing the temperature to drop rapidly. Suddenly, we were glad we had brought warm
clothes.
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| Tarahumara Girls' School Playground |
We walked over to the girls’ school where one hundred
primary school Tarahumara girls from
all over the Sierra Madre stayed from
Sunday evening through Friday, except for the ones who lived too far away and
stayed there continuously. Many of these
small girls walked four or five hours by themselves to get to the school. The Tarahumara people grant their children a
great deal of autonomy. All of those
girls were there by choice. The nuns
might try to convince them to stay if they wanted to leave, but would not try
to stop them.
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| Girls Getting Ready for Mass |
It was Saturday and the girls were getting dressed to go to
mass when we arrived. They were sitting
on the schoolyard steps, having their hair braided, or playing jump rope. Our group brought donations of soap and
shampoos from hotels, candy, and books.
Some of us donated money to the nuns to help feed the children. The little girls were all wearing colorful,
pleated skirts with floral patterns.
They wore equally bright shirts and jackets and covered their heads with
bright bandanas. We were granted the
right to take photographs of them, but they were somewhat shy.
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| Dormitory at the Tarahumara School |
Pancho showed us around the school and we saw the laundry,
dining room, kitchen, and dormitories.
One of the employees was preparing dinner, making thick flour tortillas
on a huge cast iron stove. One large
tortilla was the entire dinner for each girl, which didn’t seem very
nutritious. They were all very tiny and
none of them were overweight. The
dormitories were so full of beds that there was no room to walk except down the
center aisle. Each room held twenty
girls, but they had colorful bedspreads and curtains and didn’t look
institutional.
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| Tarahumara Girls Walking to Church |
The girls filed out of the school and headed up the road to
the church for mass. We trailed along
behind, taking photos of the colorful parade.
We visited the church briefly before the mass began and then adjourned
to the game room at the hotel where Pancho spent an hour educating us about the
canyons and the Tarahumara Indians.
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| Green Sandstone |
Copper Canyon derived its name from the green stone that
resembled copper ore, but turned out to be only lichen covered sandstone. Many minerals could be found in the canyons,
but copper was not one of them. Still,
the name stuck.
The Tarahumara Indians were scattered throughout the Sierra
Madre and the outskirts of Chihuahua.
They greatly valued independence and did not cluster together in
villages, living instead in family groups of two or three houses. Most of them lived by subsistence
farming. According to Pancho, they valued
their privacy so much that, rather than knock on someone’s door when coming to
visit, they would sit down and wait until barking dogs brought their presence
to the attention of the occupants. Dogs
were important members of the family and provided warmth on cold nights.
Another group came into the game room and cut short our
interesting lecture, which was probably a good thing because I was in need of a
nap. We had an hour to relax before
dinner, but the room was quite chilly.
We asked them to light the wood stove before we went to dinner and after
a lovely dinner of onion soup, black bass, and apple pie we returned to a very
toasty room. It was all I could do to
write down the salient details of the day before falling asleep.
March 19, 2017
We had another early morning. The fire had gone out and the room was cold,
but not freezing.
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| Flowers on the Dining Room Ceiling |
Breakfast was at
6:45. The wonderful chef, Ivan, who had
prepared our exquisite dinner the night before had been busy again. The table was laden with exceptional pastries
and everything was quite good with the exception of the chilaquiles. We were very impressed with his efforts.
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| Urique Canyon |
The Cerro del Gallego viewpoint was well developed, with a
glass floored viewing platform extending over the canyon and a covered area for
vendors to display their wares. We spent
about 45 minutes taking pictures, shopping, and enjoying the view. I didn’t buy anything. We bumped back down the road to
Cerocahui. It was clear why the locals
relied on the train to travel to the cities because that road was only paved in
the stretches nearest the towns.
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| Cerro del Gallego Viewpoint |
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| Tarahumara Basket Sellers |
We made a brief visit to the hotel to change clothes and
finish packing and then loaded up the bus and headed to the train station. The 90 minute train ride from Cerocahui to
Barrancas was pretty, but not spectacular.
The train wound through mountains and forests of white and long needled
pines that the Tarahumara used to weave baskets. At one train station, some Tarahumara women
approached the train to sell baskets. I
didn’t buy any, but that turned out to have been the spot with the prettiest
baskets and I rather regretted not having bought one there.
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| Burro on the Way to Barrancas |
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| The Barrancas Mirador Hotel |
It was nearly 3:00 by the time we got to the Barrancas
Mirador Hotel and sat down to lunch. The
hotel was much larger than the others in the chain and was built right on the
side of the canyon with spectacular views from every guest room. While tours generally chose between the
smaller hotels in the chain when planning their itineraries, all of them
visited the Barrancas Mirador because it was built at the confluence of three
canyons and offered the best views.
Unfortunately, it was much more institutional than the smaller
hotels. We had the exact same meal that
we had had for dinner the night before but, rather than being exquisite, the
black bass was dry and fishy, the potatoes undercooked, and the vegetables
boiled to death. Most of us just picked
at the food, even though we were hungry.
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| Rear View of the Mirador Hotel |
We didn’t have long after lunch before we left to go on a
hike down to some Tarahumara dwellings and then up and around onto the top of
the mesa. The Tarahumara lived in small,
family groups in places where there were freshwater springs. The water in the pool from which they took
their drinking water was crystal clear.
The Tarahumara are great basketweavers and they were selling baskets
even down along the trail. Their baskets
were woven from strips of agave and/or pine needles, sometimes dyed brilliant
colors. They came in all shapes and
sizes, from tiny ones the size of a snuff box to large ones sufficient to be
used as wastebaskets.
After the hike, I went back to the room and sat on the
balcony, admiring the view and sipping tequila until it was time to report back
to the dining hall for dinner. I took a
lot of pictures, as the light on the canyon changed constantly, suddenly
revealing distant ranges or depressions.
The view was just too vast to comprehend.
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| Spring Near Tarahumara Homes |
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| Tarahumara Dwellings |
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| The High Point of Our Hike |
Dinner was even more disappointing than lunch. We had overcooked chicken cutlets with cold,
salty pasta. Fortunately, I was offered
a salad when I asked for my chicken without mustard sauce. There was no dressing, but I had been dying
for a plate of greens. The dessert was
some sort of custard on top a brownie-like chocolate cake. I am fond of custard, but most of our group
did not like it and had been served something custard-ish at almost every
meal. I couldn’t attract the attention
of a waiter, so went to the bar for a beer.
It was a nice Bohemia dark, but they charged me 75 pesos, which was
about three times the normal price.
Still, I stayed in the bar after dinner with Pancho, Dan,
and a few others and nursed that beer until they closed the bar at 9:00 and we
all went up to our rooms. I was tired
and didn’t last long before falling asleep.
March 20, 2017
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| Sunrise Over Copper Canyon |
An alarm in another room woke me at 5:30 and I got up and
watched the sunrise for a half hour or so.
I needed to put on a fleece, but my bare feet were okay. The weather was so much warmer than we had
expected that some of us were caught without proper clothing. I would have been fine without the long-sleeved
shirts I had looked all over Nuevo Vallarta to find.
Breakfast was at our leisure between 7:00 and 9:00 but, when
we got there at 7:30, they were already out of fruit other than watermelon and
pastries. I did manage to get some
decaffeinated coffee, although it was instant.
There were no knives in evidence anywhere, making it difficult to put
butter on the toast, which was my only choice other than spicy Mexican food or
cereal. I did get some decent eggs
scrambled with slices of ham lunch meat.
When we left about 8:30, they were just bringing out another round of
fruit and pastries. Clearly, the kitchen
was having timing issues.
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| The Gondola at Barrancas |
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| The Zip Rider |
We met at 9:30 to go to the local adventure park, which
offered zip lining and a gondola ride. I
planned to go zip lining, but a large group had arrived before us and they were
out of equipment. I would have had to
have waited until 12:30 and missed lunch in order to go zip lining. I didn’t want to spend 600 pesos to wait
around in the hot sun for hours and spend all day at the adventure park, so I
changed my mind and went with the others on the gondola ride.
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| View From the Far Side of the Gondola |
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| Looking the Other Direction |
The view really was quite spectacular on the gondola and
even more gorgeous from the promontory on the other side. We could see areas of the canyons that were
hidden from view at the hotel. There
were many Tarahumara selling baskets and handicrafts and we spent most of an
hour shopping and taking pictures.
Tarahumara children, dogs, and even goats wandered about the area. One fellow entertained us by singing and
playing the guitar. I hadn’t meant to
buy anything, but I finally succumbed and bought a pair of wooden earrings for thirty pesos and a lovely basket for sixty.
It seemed ridiculous that I had paid more for a beer in the hotel than I
gave that woman for a basket that had taken hours to weave.
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| My Tarahumara Basket |
It took forever to round up our entire group and find Pancho
to drive us back to the hotel. We were
late for lunch and our food was somewhat cold and congealed by the time they
served us at 1:30. Lunch was shrimp and
vegetables, sautéed in white wine and served over rice with cheese. It tasted okay, although Betty’s was so cold
that she sent it back. The replacement
meal looked lovely and I’m sure ours would have been equally appetizing had we
arrived as planned at 1:00. Dessert was
a lime mousse that was tasty, although not well received by the custard haters.
We had the rest of the afternoon free until a basket weaving
demonstration that was planned for 5:00.
I intended to do some writing, but lay down for a quick nap and slept
until 4:30. The Tarahumara celebrate
their holidays with extended drinking binges.
It was Lent and the woman who normally conducts the basketweaving
demonstrations had already started drinking.
Pancho tried to arrange someone else, who agreed earlier in the day, but
backed out at the last minute due to lack of materials. We met in the game room at 5:00 only to be
disappointed. This was the second time
that we had found the Tarahumara to be what we would term flaky. Our friend, Shanti, had ordered some sandals
that were to have been ready for us to take back with us. Unfortunately, the artisan had been drinking
for a week and had never made them for her.
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| Tarahumara Woman & Child |
The average life span of a Tarahumara was less than fifty
years. Tuberculosis was a big killer, as
was malnutrition. We could see that
alcohol must have contributed to the problem.
It was almost possible to understand why missionaries would want to
change the customs of these people. It
was only their extreme independence that had maintained their traditional
ways. Still, they had adopted solar
panels and cell phones and didn’t hesitate to take the gondola across to sell
their wares on the far side. We rode
across with a girl about twelve who was taking the gondola for the first
time. She was alone and she actually
conversed a little with Betty, who was fascinated with the pencil thin pleats
on the traditional Tarahumara skirts and wanted to examine one at close
range. Most of the Tarahumara women
would speak only enough to transact business and betrayed no facial
expression. Still, they never denied us
permission to take photographs of them or their children and they made colorful
subjects.
With the unexpected free time until dinner, I returned to my
room to do the writing I had meant to do earlier. I couldn’t resist snapping a few more photos
of the ever-changing view. The food
might have been lousy, but one couldn’t fault the setting.
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| Sunset Reflected on the Clouds Over Copper Canyon |
March 21, 2017
The food had all been gone when we arrived for breakfast at
7:30 the previous day, so we were sure to get there right at 7:00. That morning, nothing was ready and we had to
wait until nearly 7:30 to get food. Even
the coffee bar wasn’t prepared to make coffee until about 7:20, but I did
finally manage to get a latte. I had
been warned that the coffee was exorbitantly expensive but, after having paid
75 pesos for a beer the night before, 70 pesos for a latte didn’t seem too
bad. It tasted fabulous and was worth
the expense.
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| View From Divisidero |
We left by bus about 8:30 and drove to Divisidero where
three of the canyons come together. I
had been trying for days to locate a map of the area, but never succeeded. After searching the internet for maps, I came
to the conclusion that the area was so complicated that maps were more
confusing than clarifying. As near as I
could tell, Divisidero was at the confluence of the Urique, Cobre (Copper), and
Batopilas Canyons, but the “Copper Canyon” area consisted of six major canyons
and they all looked somewhat alike.
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| The Overlook at Divisidero |
There was another developed overlook at Divisidero and a bit
of a town. Tarahumara vendors were
selling baskets and handicrafts and some of the tour members took advantage of
the opportunity to make some last purchases.
I took photographs.
Loaded back on the bus, we continued along the new highway
that would one day reach Los Mochis. We
passed a natural gas pipeline and an airport, the construction of both had been
stopped by Tarahumara legal action. The
Federal Government had simply taken Tarahumara land without their consent and
the Indians had been successful, thus far, in thwarting both projects.
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| Creel |
Eventually, we started to descend and passed through the
town of Creel, where many visitors to Copper Canyon base their
explorations. Creel is largish and not
terribly attractive. Its main draw was
that there were cheap hotels and it was possible to take day tours into the
canyons from there. For people
travelling on their own who didn’t wish to pay the 3800 pesos a night to stay
at the Mirador, it was a good option. I
was glad that Mex-Eco Tours had opted to put us up in more scenic
accommodations.
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| Homes in Creel |
We dropped down out of the mountains and into the great agricultural area of Mexico. The state of Chihuahua
grows all kinds of fruits and vegetables.
Its cold winter climate makes it suitable for growing peaches and apples
and they are the third largest producer of apples in the world. Most of the apples grown there are red or
yellow delicious, varieties I usually avoid.
I did buy a bag of dried apples and some tasteless beef jerky at the
convenience store where we took a bathroom break.
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| Chihuahua Countryside |
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| Apple Orchard in Chihuahua |
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| Mennonite Home |
More driving through agricultural land brought us to the
Mennonite settlement. About 100,000
Mennonites lived there, having come there from Canada ninety five years before when they
were deported from Canada for refusing to comply with the requirement to
participate in military service. These
Mennonites no longer drove about in horses and buggies. Most of them drove trucks and, while some of
them were conservatives and maintained their traditional dress, others were
almost completely modern and embraced all types of technology. They still tended to large families and lived
in large, modern, American style houses like one might see in wealthy suburbs
in the United States.
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| Mennonite Museum |
Before lunch, we went to the Mennonite Museum where we toured a replica of a Mennonite home. Traditional homes had a horse barn attached and three bedrooms: one for the parents, one for the girls, and one for the boys. Each home also had a "women's work area."
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| Mennonite Home Where We Ate Lunch |
We ate lunch at one of the more modest looking
Mennonite homes where the wife fed tour groups and sold baked goods and
handmade clothes. I felt like I had
suddenly landed in the Midwest somewhere.
The yard was cluttered with farming implements and animal pens. Lunch was sausage and cheese on homemade
rolls with a plethora of cookies for dessert.
It wasn’t fancy, but it was a nice change and we all felt like we had
been transported back to our childhoods in the very 1950s looking kitchen where
we ate at a long table.
Another few hours of driving after lunch brought us to the
city of Chihuahua. After having been in
the mountains for the past week, the sky seemed vast in Chihuahua. It was warm and the city was almost eerily
empty. Pancho told us that people go to
work very early in Chihuahua and don’t go out much during the week. One the weekends, it is livelier. We certainly saw no evidence of any
crime. According to Pancho, what violence
there is in Chihuahua occurs only between drug cartels and occurs mainly on the
outskirts of town. Downtown was as safe
as any large city could be.
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| The Pancho Villa Museum |
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| Car in Which Pancho Villa Was Killed |
Our first stop was at the Pancho Villa Museum, located in
the former home of his one legal (he was rumored to have had 25) wife. It was a beautiful home, surrounding a
courtyard with a fountain, with additional rooms around a rear courtyard where
his security forces had lodged. The
house had high, embossed and painted ceilings and tiled floors. He had lived there in style. The carport in back contained the old Dodge
automobile he had been driving when he was ambushed and killed. It was riddled with bullet holes. We spent about an hour viewing the museum and
then proceeded to our downtown hotel.
We spent the last night of the tour at the Quality Inn. The hotel had no doubt been chosen because it
was the only hotel conveniently located near the cathedral square, but it was a
real letdown after the nice places we had been staying. Our room looked out only to an interior light
well and was badly in need of updating.
We spent only enough time to dump our luggage and use the restroom
before setting off on a walking tour of downtown Chihuahua.
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| Central Plaza in Chihuahua |
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| Cathedral in Chihuahua |
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| The Federal Palace |
Pancho had grown up only a couple of blocks from the hotel
and seemed to know everyone we met. He
showed us the cathedral and the governor’s palace, on opposite sides of the
plaza. Chuck Berry had died that day and some Pachuco street artists were
dancing to his music in the square.
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| Mural of Miguel Hidalgo in the Federal Palace |
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| Lincoln, Juarez, & Bolivar - the Peacemakers |
The Federal Palace was currently filled with governmental
offices and had been decorated with murals depicting the history of the
revolution. Miguel Hidalgo, the priest
who had led the revolution, had been executed on the site and there were a
couple of memorials to him in evidence.
As the sun went down, the lights came on and the pedestrian streets
began to bustle and the restaurants and bars started to fill. I didn’t see any actual dogs, but images of
Chihuahuas were prevalent. One massive
mural adorned the side of a building. I
bought a mug with a Chihuahua on it for my dog sitter.
Betty and I stopped to have dinner at El Meson, a restaurant
on the second-floor terrace of a modern building overlooking the square that
was billed as having good steaks. The
location was excellent and allowed us to appreciate the juxtaposition of modern
buildings with the 18
th century cathedral. I ordered a T-bone steak that was about two
thirds of a pound, although not terribly thick.
It was well cooked and tasty and I was hungry enough to consume all of
it, despite having had my doubts.
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| Me in Chihuahua |
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| Pedestrian Street in Chihuahua |
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| Chihuahua Mural |
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| Chihuahua After Dark |
We had another early morning the following day, so retired
early. Unfortunately, neither of us
slept much until 1:00, although the hotel was quiet enough.
March 22, 2017
We were blearily up at 5:15 so as to be in the lobby with
our luggage by 6:00. The hotel was
supposed to have had breakfast ready for us at 6:00, but they didn’t and, when
they finally brought food, there was nothing quick to grab and go. For once there were no pastries and not even
so much as toast. Most of us made do
with a little bit of fruit. At least
there were bananas, which we hadn’t seen for a week.
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| Our Guide, Pancho Renteria |
We were on the bus by 6:45 and headed for the airport where
we had an 8:00 flight to Guadalajara. It
was sad to say farewell to Pancho. We
were rushed, but managed to make the plane.
An hour and a half later, we touched down in Guadalajara. There, Dan put Betty and me in a cab to go to
the Zapopan bus station. The rest of the
group was headed to the La Manzanilla/Melaque/Manzanillo area and their path
took them towards Colima. We hadn’t been
advised of the program, so goodbyes were somewhat hurried. We hoped that we could see some of our
traveling companions in the future when we anchored in their towns.
It was a long, expensive (360 pesos) cab ride to Zapopan and
then a five-hour bus ride back to Mezcales.
Dan had given us money to buy bus tickets and pay for a cab home. A Primera Plus bus was leaving almost immediately
and we hopped on without having time to buy lunch. Fortunately, they gave us a croissant
sandwich and a granola bar as we boarded.
I tried to listen to a book on tape, but mostly snoozed all the way
home. We caught a cab in Mezcales and
were back at Agave Azul by 5:00.
Neither of us had eaten much all day, so we were hungry. After an hour spent unpacking and getting
organized, we headed over to the Octopus’ Garden for dinner. I had a great big hamburger for dinner, the
first I had eaten since leaving the U.S. months before. It tasted divine. Some friends were having a birthday party and
we visited for a few minutes, but we were tired and left by 7:30. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
