The best train journey in the world

---

It was an icy cold morning as we boarded the firt class Copper Canyon train. The conductors were beautifully dressed with the traditional square hats. We found ourselves seated in the emergency seats on the left side of the train. We had asked for the left side (for the best view) when we booked but thought we only got right side seats so were pleasantly surprised. Opposite us were a Mexican couple and in the carriage were a few other Mexicans, a group of French tourists and a group of American tourists (Gerard's group - see the previous blog). Both groups had guides who launched into guide mode. The leader of the American group was particulary loud and quite patronising but the old Americans just smiled and laughed as he talked slowly and repeated himself constantly. But on occassion through the trip he did provide some interesting facts.

The first stretch was flat. There were orchards near the city of Cuauhtemoc that were unusual because they had expensive hail protection covers installed. We passed Meninite camps and saw a huge flock of cattle egrets flying across the beautiful landscape. The guide explained that we were passing a farm with buffalo, zebra and llamas. We only saw 1 llama. As we stated to climb we saw snow capped mountains and all the puddles on the ground were iced up. We had been told we should spend the night somewhere like Creel and explore the mountains but with it being so cold we decided not to stop over. In the pine tree covered mountains we passed a couple of former Jesuit missions. The train topped in Divisadero for 20 minutes. The view was amazing. There were lots of tourist tat stalls. We brought some little boxes for the nieces and some gorditos for our lunch. We didn't want to eat in the expensive restaurant on the train.

The view on the remainder of trip was spectacular and I would often wander to the ends of the carriages to hang out the window, risking falling out for a good photo. While on the train I counted 83 tunnels and 21 bridges but the bridges were not always obvious. By the time it got dark we were on flat ground again. If we had taken the second class train, with the shorter days, we would have missed some of the scenery and arrived in Los Mochis very late.

We shared a taxi with some French girls to the Hotel Fenix which was very comfortable for the US$30. We had an Oxxo dinner and finally got to sleep around midnight. It was a very long day but worth it.

---