Last leg of the journey: El Chepe to Chihuahua

I didn't know anything about this railway or about the Copper Canyon before this trip. Initially, I had thought I might travel overland all the way back home, or at least to Arizona, but as I read the tour book, this detour sounded more and more appealing. Indeed, it was one of the best parts of my trip.

The official name is the Ferrocarril Chihuahua al Pacifico, but it is known as El Chepe (for the initials Che and Pe). It was built between 1900 and 1961. It runs 418 miles, over 37 bridges and 86 tunnels, and at one point goes in a full circle, up, up, to gain elevation. I couldn't depict the twists and turns on my map, but here is a view of the full length of my trip, the last two straight lines representing the very not straight route of El Chepe. And below that are some photos of the train ride. Windows at either end of the individual cars are wide open, so I could lean right out and take pictures and videos (I would have freaked if the kids had been there; because it was just me, I leaned right out!).

The window I hung out of, on the train...

...to get this shot.

Scenery along the route.

Bridges and river systems along the route of El Chepe.

Las Barrancas del Cobre

The final days of my trip were some of the best. I caught the train in El Fuerte, which is also where I met Allan and Jillian, Australians who are traveling the world for a year! I am so jealous of their adventures. I was very happy to share in just a couple days of their world tour. 

Here are some of the journal entries I made while I was up in the mountains, and some photos:

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Zip lining! So fun! One of the best days of my trip. We left early for a van ride to the park entrance, where I, my two Australian friends, and about 6 or 7 other people from our hotel registered for the zip line tour (the registration form, presumably holding the park harmless should we fall, was all in Spanish; who knows what we really agreed to). There was some waiting around, then we got equipped and suited up and got a demonstration, in Spanish with a translator, of hand signals, how to break, etc. By now, some others had joined our group to be guided across the various zip lines and suspension bridges: a couple from Aguascaliente, another couple that was Spanish-speaking but I didn’t catch where they are from, and a young couple---the man from Guadalajara and the woman from Germany, who also speaks fluent Spanish and English. She has been working for a year in Guadalajara in a school for disadvantaged children, but soon she has to go back to Germany to finish her education.

I actually thought the suspension bridges were more frightening than the zip lines. I could look down between the wooden slats and see how far I could fall. We were hooked on to a cable, but only with one hook, not the massive pulley system we use for the zip lines. Basically, we were on our own to hold on and walk across---the hook would save us only from falling to our deaths, not from falling off the bridge. I walked very, very slowly.

Later, after lunch, we hung out on the terrace at the hotel and watched humming birds. My room is far, far above the common areas of the hotel, up many, many steps. The first day, I got a ride up in a van. But today, I have now walked up three times, and I am ready to go back to the van rides! My legs are shaky---in part from walking so many stairs, in part from scary suspension bridges, and in part from zip lining. At one point, on the longest zip line, I noticed that there seemed to be more space in my harness; I did briefly think it might be slipping off. Then I realized that this was the first time while actually zipping across that I had breathed. It was just my abdomen moving with my breath. It really was exhilarating.

Stepping onto the suspension bridge. That first step was terrifying.

But equally terrifying was realizing I had gone half way, and I could not turn back but only keep going. 

Zipping.

Allan and the German teacher crossing the suspension bridge.

Finished and feeling so proud of ourselves!

 

View of the canyon from my room.

Sunrise over the canyon.

El Papa

I haven't yet been able to formulate my thoughts about my wonderful stay up at Posada Barrancas, at the quirky, wonderful Hotal Tarahumara, but while I am, and sorting all my photos and videos, here is one anecdote about how I learned about the new pope.

Maria, the dueña of the hotel, told me the news. When we returned from zip lining, we came into the kitchen/bar area, and she said, “tenemos papa.” Because just that morning I had forgotten the word for potatoes and had been kindly reminded by the staff that it is “papas,” I thought for a moment that she was telling me the good news that we would have potatoes again tonight. But she seemed oddly overly enthusiastic about potatoes. Finally, she said in English, a new pope. Oh, Papa, not papas.

Then she said, equally enthusiastically, he is from Argentina. The first time there is a pope from the Americas. She was very, very excited. She said how he appeared all in white, and the cross around his neck was made of wood. She said he has asked us to pray for Benedict, for the brave decision he has made to step down. I asked what name the new pope would take, and she said Francisco the First. The first. How appropriate. Reading the news in English now (now that I finally have an Internet connection), I see that he is being called in English “Francis.” I think I will try to think of him always as Francisco.

El Fuerte

I was feeling a bit unsure of myself by the time I reached Los Mochis, the turning point of my journey from the sea to the mountains. To catch the train in the morning, I needed to get up at about 4:00 a.m., get a taxi to the train station to book my ticket in time, for a train that would leave at 6:00 a.m. for the Copper Canyon, las Barrancas del Cobre. I had no hotel reservations up in the canyon but a vague idea of where I wanted to stay. I just couldn't get my mind around the idea of being on the move again so quickly, or of getting up so early. But nor did I want to stay in the slightly expensive (though comfortable) Best Western in Los Mochis. I studied the tour book some more, and finally realized that I could buy my train tickets in advance, at the station in Los Mochis, but I could catch the train at the next town up on the train route, in El Fuerte. Once I had secured my ticket, I could go by bus at any time to El Fuerte and catch the train the next day, at the more reasonable hour of 8:40 a.m. So that is what I did. And it was the best decision of my trip! For so many reasons!

First, though, here is what I wrote, back upon my arrival in El Fuerte:

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I think I love El Fuerte. The people are so friendly, and they do not look at me as a freak for my blond hair and blue eyes, nor do they try to sell me trinkets as a tourist. But they do not ignore me, either. If only my Spanish were better! They ask me where I am from and seem so welcoming and friendly---from the moment I got off the bus! Someone saw me with my backpack and my tour book pages, and asked me what I am looking for. I told him the hotel, and he pointed me in the right direction. I started walking that way, but was still looking lost, when another man asked me, and I said that I thought I knew the way, and he said yes, it is that way; he would take me there. I said I thought perhaps I should eat first, so he walked me to a nearby little restaurant---the plastic chair and vinyl tablecloth kind.

The restaurant was a couple blocks away, and it did cross my mind that I might be about to get lost or that I was crazy to follow this man, but I went ahead and followed. By this time we were speaking English, and he told me he is part of the tourist bureau here; if I would come find him in the center square after lunch, he had maps for me. I ate a lunch of vegetable and chicken stew and tortillas, communicating only in Spanish, and then went to the square. It is quaint and colonial, and not crowded but not deserted either. I walked toward the cathedral, and the tourist-bureau man saw me and walked me up to my hotel, which I never would have found without him as it is behind the old Spanish fort (which is now a museum) on a hill. He waited with me until we found the proprietor, who was expecting me (I had emailed from Los Mochis). I thanked my personal tour guide and tipped him and said I would find him in the square again, because he wanted to recommend a hotel up in the Canyon.

I changed (it is HOT here, especially in the sun) and set out to take pictures. I found the tourist information man at the government building he described---there is, indeed, a tourist information booth there, although it looks pretty closed. Not many tourists? He gave me free maps and the hotel recommendation in the mountains, and pointed out a recommended restaurant for dinner, which does indeed look nice. I thanked him again, got his name, Jesus, and then went on to find water, ice cream, and a cool place to sit.

What a wonderful way to start off in a town. And my hotel is so quirky and unusual---it looks over the river, but also down on some houses; roosters and hens walk around the area, and I suspect some crowing will keep me up tonight.
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Yes, crowing did keep me up, and a lot of other noise all night down along the river, at all hours, but aside from that, it was wonderful.

Now, here in Chihuahua, I can say that the best part of going to El Fuerte and staying at the Hotel Rio Vista was meeting Allan and Jillian, an Australian couple traveling all around the world. But even if that hadn't happened, I would have been very pleased with my stop in El Fuerte.

Here are a few pictures:

Back "on the grid"

Yep, the Internet in the mountains was unreliable. The first night and day at the hotel had no Internet at all; by the evening of my first full day there, the Internet was up, but it was soooo slow! And it was only down in the common areas -- sitting room, terrace, kitchen/dining area. Definitely not up in my room, which was an enormous number of steps up, up, up. I had asked for a canyon-view room, and it was well worth it. But it cost me not only in pesos but also in climbs up and down.

I have so many tales to tell: zip-lining across the canyon; wonderful fellow-tourists I met; the quaint town of El Fuerte, currently my favorite town in Mexico; and of course the train ride and all the views of the canyon. But now, in my comfy room in the city of Chihuahua, having skyped with the family and then gotten a wonderful dinner at a nearby restaurant, with live music (straight off my Pandora station of Spanish love songs, and not mariachi), it is 11:55 and I must get some sleep.

Unadventurous eating

I need to relax and do nothing for a bit. I need to be spontaneous, but not by rushing on to the next thing and the next until the trip is over. I had a churro at a sidewalk stand. Does that count as spontaneous? I stood there mute, watching the cooking, the flavoring, and the transactions with the many Mexican families who were coming out of church. I kept waiting, thinking the crowd would die down and I could order mine, or even just find out how much they were. But the crowd was not going to die down---these things were delicious, and families were ordering them by the dozen (which also made it hard to figure out how much they were). Finally I spoke up and asked for one. One? Yes, just one. And I paid with a 50-peso bill, when I think they were something less than 10 pesos each (still not sure what, because I stuffed my change in my purse and started eating!). I’m always anxious to get rid of my coins, but I need to have them handy for tips and small transactions. They come in 1-peso, 2-peso, 5-peso, and 10-peso denominations (the exchange rate now is even better for USD than it was in past years---close to 12 to 1, when it has been 10 to 1).

I have to relate the tale of eating at a sidewalk taco stand, even though I don’t come out sounding too adept (quite inept, in fact). I had gotten down to the bus station in Mazatlan early to buy my ticket to Los Mochis, because it was a Sunday and the buses run more like once every two hours, rather than one an hour on other days. Indeed, I got one of the last seats---there were either seats in the back, by the bathrooms, or two in the very front. I chose the very front, gracias a Dios. But I hadn’t had time to eat breakfast at the hotel (which was fine by me because the food at that hotel was terrible) and I didn’t know when I would be able to eat real food (not chips or cookies or soda sold in the bus stations), so I went across the street from the bus station, where there were several sidewalk taco stands, and chose the one with the most people seated there (as a sign that it was the best; also, it had a station for squeezing orange juice). I started by ordering the OJ, and the duena squeezed it right there; it was delicious. I asked if they had something for breakfast, with eggs, but no, they only had tacos and enchildadas. Not being sure exactly what she said was in the various things, I asked if there was something “vegetarian.” She said, no, well, but I could have an enchilada with cheese. That still sounded too heavy for breakfast and my weak stomach that was about to spend hours in a bus (where I frequently get motion sick). I sat drinking my OJ, and noticed the bowls of fresh salsa and pico de gallo on the tables. I had an idea: I would ask for a plain tortilla, and eat it with pico de gallo. I formulated the question in Spanish in my head and stood up to ask, just as my purse, draped around my shoulders, crashed into my still-full cup of OJ, which spilled all over the table and floor. A lot of “lo siento mucho” and “estoy stupida” flew out of my mouth as I helped her mop up the table. The OJ that dripped down the sidewalk stayed there.

Well, not to be deterred, now that I was there, and no one seemed overly concerned about my estupidez, I asked for a replacement cup of OJ (that I would pay for, of course) and a plain tortilla. They both arrived, and were wonderful, and I ordered another tortilla. In all, it was 36 pesos (15 each for the OJ, 3 each for the tortillas).

Yep, that was my big adventure eating at a sidewalk cafe. I am now reading another travel memoir, Tales of a Female Nomad, by a woman who begins her journey in Mexico at age 48 in Mexico City, on her way to Cuernavaca for a month at a language school. Yes, it has a familiar ring to it, but our journeys are nothing alike. She is so adventurous and daring---I could never be that daring. She relishes eating street food, and makes that her first meals in Mexico City. About a week later, in Cuernavaca, she breaks out in a terrible, undiagnosable rash over her entire body---and somehow she interprets this as a sign that she should keep going; I would have hopped the first plane home (and definitely blamed it on the food; she blames it on the malaria pills she had started taking when she arrived).

OK, it’s time to be a little more daring and get out of this Best Western business hotel and decide my next move. But really, it is so comfortable and familiar here. Last night I watched Cowboys and Aliens dubbed over in Spanish in my hotel room until I fell asleep, exhausted. This morning, I sit at the hotel restaurant, having enjoyed the breakfast buffet, typing on my laptop and soaking up the free, and actually somewhat speedy (by the standards I have enjoyed so far) wi-fi. Who knows if I’ll have Internet at all in the mountains. The tour book advises to load up on cash as ATMs are unreliable in the mountains, so I’m skeptical that I’ll have Internet at all. (These are my complaints---so not daring!)

Where I've been, where I'm going next

I arrived in Los Mochis today. This is one end of the Ferrocarril Chihuahua Pacifico railroad, or El Chepe, as it is known here. The railway runs from here to Chihuahua (depart 6 a.m. and arrive 9 p.m.), but there are stops up in the mountains, and I am planning to make some. But this is the part of the trip I had not planned out as carefully, and I'm not sure when and where to go first.

Meanwhile, here is a map of where I have been so far. The bottom is Puerto Vallarta and surrounds, where I went first; the middle is Mazatlan and the mountain pueblos I visited; and lastly, Los Mochis.

Mazatlan in photos

I have a simple point-and-shoot camera and no photographic ability, but here are some shots I think are passable. I have spent two full days in Mazatlan, at what was a top resort... in 1955. Today, I went on an organized tour into the mountains to see some old silver mining towns. Tomorrow, it is time to move on....

Here is the bus I took from Puerto Vallarta to Mazatlan. Comfy, air-conditioned, and even had free wi-fi (when it worked). Not a horrible way to spend 8 hours, but that's still a really long time!

A typical pueblita.

Fishing boats on the beach near the old town of Mazatlan.

Mazatlan Cathedral.

Cathedral in Concordia.

Cobblestone streets of Copala. The village reminded me of the medieval towns in Spain, except that they have been essentially abandoned for the last 100 years, since the silver mine here closed. Now they subsist primarily on tourism, which is also drying up with the recession, travel advisories, and the reduction in cruise ships making Mazatlan a port of call.

Copala.

Our tour guide took my picture in front of the Copala Cathedral.

Various pictures in Concordia and Copala.

It has been a little overcast and windy in Mazatlan, which made for a beautiful sunset tonight. I played around with my camera.

New leg of the journey

It is an interesting experience to spend so much time with oneself. I’m not good at quieting my mind and just being, but that’s part of the role of this trip. Yesterday, I spent nearly 10 hours in transit, from taxis to bus stops, buses going in the opposite direction than I needed to go so that I could catch the correct bus going the right way, retracing those steps (and traffic jams) I had just passed, and then careening over two-lane mountain roads to finally arrive in Mazatlan at 8:30 at night (discovering later that I had also crossed a time zone and it was actually 7:30).

But long travel days are good for thinking, staring out the window, daydreaming, speculating. I passed so many tiny pueblos, and seeing the architecture and patterns of these little towns and villages in Mexico always discourages me: They contain a taco stand or small restaurant with a few plastic chairs, right out on the sidewalk; if large enough a Pemex station (national gas company) or an Oxxo (like a 7-11); and always various structures mid-construction or mid-decay. Buildings go up and fall down here with regularity, and the result is that the entire country has a feel of being about to spring into action or about to fall into ruin. And everywhere, there is garbage, piles of broken bricks and building refuse, rusted car parts, stray dogs, graffiti.

Yesterday we did pass through some landscape that I have rarely seen in the parts of Mexico I have traveled so far: beautiful rolling hills covered with grasses, farmland with neat rows of crops, a river or two. It was while we were still in Nayarit state, before we had arrived in the larger city of Tepic. Later, when we crossed the border into Sinaloa state, the bus was boarded by agriculture checkpoint workers and some other group, not police, and I’m not sure what they wanted. They boarded, asked where we were going, took a quick look around, and left. A little later, on the opposite side of the road, we saw a massive police checkpoint, with armed and even masked police officers carrying automatic weapons. One often sees large groups of police in Mexico, in the cities and the country, so it was not surprising to me. But it is still unsettling to see uniformed masked men with military-grade weapons pointed at what seem to be average citizens.

We arrived in Mazatlan after dark, so I have barely seen anything of this city. I want to walk around the old town and perhaps even take a tour of some colonial cities nearby dating to the 1600s. Mazatlan’s “old” town dates only to the 19th century, and this city’s history has largely been only as a tourist destination. It is considered a place where Mexicans go on vacation, and it is much easier to speak and be spoken to in Spanish by the hotel staff than it was in Puerto Vallarta.

A new leg of my journey begins! I am not in my slice of heaven at Playa Escondida. I have just finished reading a travel memoir by Mary Morris, Nothing to Declare, who wrote of traveling alone through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua in the 1970s. Many of her observations resonated with me, but after a travel day like yesterday, I sought out this one:

“Women who travel as I travel are dreamers. Our lives seem to be lives of endless possibility. Like readers of romances we think that anything can happen to us at any time. We forget that this is not our real life---our life of domestic details, work pressures, attempts and failures at human relations. We keep moving. From anecdote to anecdote, from hope to hope. Around the next bend something new will befall us. Nostalgia has no place for the woman traveling alone. Our motion is forward, whether by train or daydream.”

Whale watching!

I succeeded in capturing a humpback flapping its tail! I spent a glorious day out on a boat tour, with about 25 other American tourists. I am exhausted, red as a lobster, and still swaying with the sea, but it is a day I enjoyed beyond measure. We saw many whales as well as dolphins and a tortoise of some kind, plus some multicolored fish. But watching these whales breach and play and flap and even seem to wave their fins goodbye was the highlight. (The boat was very rocky, so it was difficult to maintain the aim of my camera; forgive the shakiness). 

Puesto del Sol

Living right at the ocean's edge gives one the chance to enjoy one beautiful sunset after another. I am posting a few pictures of them. I am loving it here so much, staying so busy doing nothing, that I might have to stay another day to squeeze in all this nothing. The sound of the surf is my constant companion, and it is like an irregular heart beat of the earth and sea.

View from the patio of my little casita.

View from my breakfast table this morning.

People surfing at the beach in Sayulita.

I walked into Sayulita today from my hotel (about a 20-30 minute walk, depending on how lost you get). This was the view of the town beach as I emerged from the jungle. The town is much more full of gringos than I thought the day I first arrived. There are surfers and beach bums with long dread locks and overly tanned retirees flouting their destiny with skin cancer. It was weird and fascinating. I then hiked back to my private oasis here at the hotel and decided I'd seen enough of the town.

Embracing a Perfect Day

When I was 15 years old, I had a perfect day. I boy I liked in high school liked me, too. He asked me to the school dance, and we went, and we had a great time, and he kissed me goodnight, which at 15 was a perfect date and a perfect day. I remember coming into the house after this perfect date and kiss goodnight and being so happy, and I found my mother sleeping on the couch. I thought this was strange, but I was busy being happy, so I said goodnight. The next morning, my parents said they were getting divorced.

In my 15-year-old mind, I turned this into a condemnation of having the “perfect” day. If I ever allowed myself to feel happy and at peace and content with the world as it is, I thought, disaster would surely strike. You might think that nearly 30 years of life experiences would help me reject this silly notion, but it is amazing how we hold on to supposed truths we learned as kids. There have been many times I have had wonderful days and wonderful experiences and wanted to be happy and at peace and content, but I have always reminded myself of that day and told myself, no, you never know what might happen and you have to guard against the foolish notion that contentedness and peace are things you’ll get to experience without a counterbalance -- for you, Erin, the yin of happiness shall be followed by the yang of crisis.

Today is one of those days. I had a wonderful day. Everything that I thought might happen has happened and every way that I envisioned this day would go has gone that way. There is not a single thing that I would change about this day. I began my adventure, post-editorial committee meeting, by taking a taxi to the Wal-Mart of Puerto Vallarta, where I knew I could catch the bus to Sayulita, the pueblo where I had made hotel reservations. That went as planned: I picked up a few necessities at Wal-Mart, I went to the bus stop, I caught the bus to Sayulita (which was not the higher-end inter-city bus I expected, but was really better, because it was an un-airconditioned, bouncy bus that made many stops along the way and on which I was the only gringo, which let me feel, at least for the moment, that I had strayed off the “beaten path”). I arrived about an hour later, walked around the pueblo, and saw the perfect combination of a non-touristy town that yet had a sprinkling of occasional tourists and signs in English. I then took a taxi to my hotel, which was the perfect distance away from the town, so that I could not stop grinning as the taxi pulled into this tiny oasis on the sea. I checked into my room, which is feet from the ocean, eclectic and small and quaint and perfect, got a tour of the grounds, waded in the surf, sat in a beach chair to read, and then met Jose, a waiter who has entirely embraced his new role as my personal Spanish teacher. I later enjoyed “happy hour” (two-for-one drinks -- two for me!) with perfect white wine and a beautiful sunset. I ordered from the menu where every single dish, including the green salad, has a recommended wine pairing (do you see what I mean about perfect for me?), and then skipped straight to dessert (perfect!). Now I sit on the terrace of my casita and listen to the surf and think and write and look forward to yoga tomorrow morning, and kayaking, and seeing more whales (saw some spouts today offshore).

There is nothing about this day that I would change. It fills me with dread to write that, but one goal of this journey is to work on self-awareness and mindfulness. Thus, I am aware that the fear of accepting a perfect day is something I need to overcome. Tomorrow the sun will rise, and the world will not end, and crises will not befall me, and I will have a day after that (however less than perfect it might be), and a day after that, and a day after that.

Not off the beaten path

I continue my streak of traveling to places NOT off the beaten path. Right now I am at an all-inclusive resort in Puerto Vallarta. Very much on the beaten path. I think they actually comb down the sand on the beach each night. Everyone speaks English. Typically, I say something to the staff or waiters that I think is in excellent Spanish, and they reply in English. Only after begging that they speak Spanish to me so that I can practice do they let loose -- and I catch barely 20% of what they are saying. But they are so nice and sweet and excited to help me.

This morning my waiter had such a long conversation (plática) with me in Spanish (most of which I didn’t understand, but I think it was about how many people here only speak English, that he had only been able to speak English at a conversational level for a year, and that if I come back tomorrow so-and-so from the wait staff could tell me more about the next town I am visiting) that I was afraid he was going to get in trouble.

I’m not quite yet on vacation, as tonight the events related to my editorial meeting begin. But I have Internet here on the beach and made an appointment at the hotel spa for this afternoon, so it’s not exactly working either!

Here is the sunset from last night at dinner.