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Published: November 29th 2006
EVERYONE!!!!!
53 students and 1 bus driver! (Dr. Morales-chaperone- took the picture)I LOVE TRAVELING. (anyone have any questions so far? haha)
From the 19th to the 26th, I was traveling with the fabulous exchange students of Rotary District 4150.
First took a bus to Tepic from Vallarta, joined up with the students there, took a bus to Mazatlan where we met up with ALL the exchange students going (53). We hung around until 11 at night, and arriving at about noon, we had a lot of time to kill. The Rotary Club was hosting a International food event, and the exchange students from Maz. made food from there country. And I had sushi(second time in my life) from Aya, Yuki and Yuka, and this time I actually liked it! So after some hanging out at the beach we left for Las Mochis on a bus with a capacity for about 42. So you can all imagine how comfortable
that 6 hour bus ride in the middle of the night was!
We arrived at about 5 in the morning in Las Mochis where we take a 10 hour train to Creel. Pretty good ride. I always like trains, and the whole enough-seats-for-everyone is always a kick. It was an
unbelievably Divisadero
This was the lookout we stopped at on the train ride. This is the canyon de Oteros, and you could buy typical art, and food. slow train, but at least you could see the scenery. We went over this one brige, really high over the river below, and you couldn't see the river, so thats a nice life-check for the heart when you look out the window and see just water. Haha. Arrive in Creel about 4:30-ish, after a small stop at a lookout over a giant canyon. SO big, I have never seen such a crazy amount of rock.
So over the next few days (I'm trying to speed this up,because if I wrote everything I COULD write, we would all be here all day.) I went to:
*a cave,
una cueva *valle de los hongos (vally of the mushrooms) , valle de las ranas (vally of the frogs), both of which we just climbed all over rocks all day, as we clearly are three years old. (The vallies were named for their shapes of the rocks , hugely tall mushrooms I suppose, and giant frogs)
*The
Pueblo Viejo (old town) of Creel; which basically consists of two catholic churches right next to each other, one square thats comes with all the churches in México, and one long street of stores selling
Dorms
Dorms in the Univeristy. 2 rooms for girls, 2 for boys all the local art
*an unbelievably gorgeous waterfall (which gets its own paragraph here in a second)
*hot springs
las aguas termales (also awesome)
*The last day was at a lake, rowing, which was a new experience for Brazil, as apparently they had all only been in rivers, and barely any of them had rowed before.
And of course, lots of dancing in the dorms, a fire outside every night, taught each other card games-spoons from Team Canada- . And on the last night, (GO CANADA!) I made s'mores. Other than one guy from Japan- his mom's american-, the americans and the other girl from Canada, no one else had eaten a s'more, and how could I deprive them of that delicacy when there we were the probably the only fires we would have in México as we all live in really warms places.
Ok, so special paragraph #1- Waterfall.
La cascade de Cusarare. Breathtaking. We walked about 3 km to get to eat, on the way ran into a little section of the stream that pooled behind some rocks, and there was
ice (ice! in MÉXCIO) since the water wasn't flowing there, and it DOES get
A bunch
You're looking at :Switzerland, France, Germany, Brazil, Japan, and Canada. I love exchange. cold in Chihuahua (very cold at night, big-giant-mexican-sweater-and-new-toque-that-I-bought-cold, but hot enough to wear a tee-shirt in the day-unless your brasilian which means jacket and sweater all day). So obviously we stopped and played with the ice for about 20 minutes. After that little side trip,we continued on, found the waterfall. There were little fences up, but since we are out of the rainy season, there wasn't much water, so we went climbing all over the waterfall too. You could walk right to the edge and look over, it was amazing. The hills, the icey-blue river, the giant rocks, the amazing amounts of pine trees(I heart pines). Then there were about a thousand stairs (which made me think of the 5 we built in Tijuana in July, and I cant even imagine trying to make the amount there were going down the side of this cliff. poor builder people), and you could go walk down, right below the waterfall. Not everyone made the trek down, so it was nice. The ones that did basically just sat there and stared at it. {side note: I took a picture for some random guy, and when I asked him if he'd like me to
Valle de las Ranas
Doesn't that look like a frog?? take it for him, he asked if I was from Brasil because I had a portugeuse accent. Woot for not having an english one!}
#2-
Las aguas termales de Recowata. To get to them we had to walk down (an hour and a half) the Canyon -
cañón- de Tararecua. Walking down was when we took all our pictures and everything, but also, Anni (my sister from Finland), and I stopped a lot just to stare at the canyon. It is so undescribly huge, covered in trees, bordered with rock of yellows, reds and browns,... it was something so awesome, in the sense that it inspires awe. You can't keep your eyes off it. The pictures just don't even do it justice, so we stopped so much so we won't ever forget it. We got to the hot springs, and there were 5 pools, but only two with water. But again, because we're exchange students, and we know there's always got to be something more, we climbed down the last bit of the side of the cliff, and into the stream. The last bits of hot water were falling in little waterfalls, over rocks that had been worn out by
I have converted the world
That's right. We're being the giant mushroom shaped rocks. That picture got a few wierd looks. the water, so you could sit right underneath the falls, like a shower. The water was so clean, because the bottom of the stream was covered in big smooth rocks. After a nice afternoon in the water, we headed back up, some people ran into a guy who drove the whole way down, who gave them a ride back up, and then a ride to the next people, then the next. But Anni and I decided we wanted to do the whole thing, and we did. Basically ran the whole way up, made it to the top in a little under an hour. Man were we tired. But we were the first girls up, and one of the first ones up all together. So we went with a guy from Belgium and one from Brazil to the edge of the canyon. We all sat on this rock, and you couldn't see
anything but the space, the trees, the canyon. There wasn't any sound at all, and we just sat there (after we took some pictures, we're still exchange students after all, it's our way), no one talked. It was too overwhelming to talk. Another one of those amazing experiences that
I can't even describe how amazing it was, even though I have written so much. ..... well, clearly you can see which part I liked best about the trip.
And that was the YEP 4150 trip to Creel, Chihuahua. After about 35 hours on buses and a train, I was back to my familiar palm trees.
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Bradon
non-member comment
First comment and i'm first WOOT
Hey there! Looks like you are having a great time and i can't believe you actually had to bust out the toque and scarf in mexico! P.S send some of that sun up here. The -31 weather is kinda getting annoying.