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Monday, June 12, 2017

Two Days in Copper Canyon


After a marathon drive to get to Copper Canyon, I found myself in the red-tile-floored, stone-arched common room of the Casa Margarita hotel in the town of Creel, signing up for a tour to scenic Batopilas with a trio of friendly (and English-speaking!) Tasmanians before I’d even taken my bag to my room. 

Thus began a fun, beautiful, and restful stay in the Copper Canyon region.  For three nights I left Pepin parked alongside the Casa Margarita and enjoyed being a tourist on vacation.

My doubts from the driving day were at least partially erased.

Copper Canyon is part of the high, dry sweep of Northern Mexico, still similar to the American Southwest, a mixture of pine woods, surges of bare stone, and of course immense canyon systems.  The Mexicans will tell you with pride that the Copper Canyons are larger and deeper than the Grand Canyon, but I found another difference more telling: they’re inhabited.  In the U.S. you stand at a parapet and gaze out over miles of uninhabited rock.  In contrast, the Copper Canyon area is home to dozens of small mountain villages eking out a dry farming existence with horses, goats, cows, and small shacks or mud-brick houses.  These include an indigenous tribe, the Tarahumaras, some of whom still wear their traditional clothing.




You see them at the tourist spots selling trinkets, or on foot on the road with rope-soled sandals carrying a heavy bag, and although they’re used to tourists, wherever we stopped on our tour they came around and peered at us with shy interest.

Like any canyon country, the main draws are hiking and scenery.  My Australian companions--Gerk, Helen, and their grown son Daniel--were self-proclaimed hiking maniacs: they were gearing up for a three-day canyon hike, and were taking this scenic driving tour in the interim, with the hope there’d be at least a little walking or climbing thrown in.

For me, I was happy to let someone else do the driving—especially after I saw the road.  The guidebook had recommended Batopilas, a village at the bottom of the canyon, as a highlight, and I’d considered driving there myself, but woe to me if I had.  Our guide, a soft-spoken local named Samuel, took us down in a big Ford Expedition, and one would absolutely need thick tires, a large gas tank, and a V8 engine to even attempt this road.  It was a vertical plunge down unrelenting hairpins, with the road itself a slalom course of fallen rocks, stones, and sometimes boulders.


I was delighted to be able to put my nose to the glass and let Samuel worry about dodging rocks.  And we frequently dispensed with the glass by stopping at scenic view spots (unmarked and unpaved, just amenable gravel pull-outs), where we jumped out and deployed our cameras, and where the view usually included further sections of the road below.


Or further below...


As we descended, the air grew hotter, the pines disappeared, and hillsides of organ-pipe cactus took their place—this was the “low season” for tourists because, appropriately enough, the “low” latitudes of the canyon are hotter, and in summer often insufferable.  But the Expedition had good AC. 

At the bottom at last, we toured the pretty town of Batopilas, had lunch at a homey restaurant off the plaza (a nice cooling shrimp chili that was more like a cilantro salsa soup), went to a mining museum (Batopilas used to be a silver-mining boom town) and finally took a drive out of town along the river to the Satevo Mission or “lost cathedral,” a mysterious church dating from the 1600s.


The legend is that when Spanish setters first explored the region in 1632 they found the church already there.  It’s still a functioning church; the local schooteacher opened it up for us and Tarahumara children gathered round as we explored the lovely and simple interior.  The primitive icons and altarpiece were new (as was the plaster facing, added by the government in 2000) but the old wooden door and the uneven brick floor with built-in graves spoke of the ages.

Afterward the Australians voted for walking back to town, and I was delighted at the chance to stretch my driving legs.  They proceeded to clamber down, ford the river, and hike back along it, but I stuck to the dirt road.  It was about an hour’s peaceful stroll back into town in the cool of the evening.


A night in a beautiful cliffside hotel listening to the sound of the river, and a dawn start for the dramatic drive back up completed our tour.  Well worth it!







2 comments:

  1. Matt, your writing and photos are the next best thing to being there. Considering the heat and the roads, maybe even better.
    I've read about the Tarahumara but you've met them on the way to a hidden cathedral, how very cool. You're firmly in the tradition of the great Victorian traveler - writers who brought their adventures home to their readers. We home bound types who are following your explorations salute you. Onward!

    I'm behind it keeping up with your blog but will try to read faster.

    Art

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