How low can you go..

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FRENCH

Dans notre blog, il n'y a pas toujours de raison justifiant la version anglaise avant la version francaise (ou vis versa) mais dans ce cas particulier, il y en a une: ma version sera beaucoup plus courte que le roman écrit par Jason... La malédiction me poursuit depuis l'école primaire: j'ai toujours eu du mal à écrire plus que l'essentiel en rédaction...
On y va...
Intro: Le canyon du cuivre, c'était sympa. Nous sommes montés dans le train, le CHEPE, lundi matin à 7h00 et sommes arrivés au terme de notre voyage, après queques haltes, à Los Mochis le vendredi soir vers 20h30. Le voyage a duré 5 jours.

ANGLAIS

...After a scenic ride on the Chihuahua to Pacific (Chepe) train to Creel, we were in the frozen wild west, though geographically we were definitely in north east Mexico. Here most men are in jeans and cowboy hats and those who aren't are Tarahumara (or Raramuri) indians who are still turned out in traditional Tarahumara clothing: coloured tunics, white thigh length skirts and sandals.

From Creel we ventured in a mini-van driven by a cock, 5 hours into deep, deep, deep, deep canyon. The road to Batopilas was hard to believe. The first hour or two was tarmac through vast pine forests, beyond which stretched huge gaping chasms in the earth, as if a madman (or woman) with a digger sized for the almighty had been searching haphazardly for gold or silver or something.

The last three hours were on bumpy track, fringed by hellish drop offs of up to a kilometre, where God's older and more professional brother had gone to work carving a never ending passage of gorges, valleys, peaks, and troughs out of sheer rock in greens, reds and oranges on a canvas of blue sky. The track that took us down to the remote mining town of Batopilas was the most spectacular as in 14km, you drop almost 2km through innumerous, sometimes terrifying switchbacks. Now that's a canyon!

After a day in Batopilas eating seafood stuffed fish and drinking micheladas, (lemon juice, worcester sauce, soy, salt, pepper, chili sauce on ice topped with beer), we headed out of the canyon to re-board the train to see another aspect of the Copper Canyon system from Divisadero and the close by Posada de Barrancas. As the Divisadero Mirador hotel was $2000 pesos a night and Rancho Lanchas hostel was a disgusting hovel, we ended up at Posada Barranca where the Armando Diaz and his family had a place.

As it was freezing at night up there, we were given firewood for our hearth with which, due to our poor bush skills, we managed only to burn the kindling and to smoke the room out sufficiently to stop Nat sleeping and to give her an instant dose of bronchial inflammation a.k.a. fire lung.

Next day we hiked into the canyon, heading for a viewpoint of the Urique river with our guide who I suspected hadn't recovered fully from a heavy night on some north Mexican/Tarahumara hooch. Nathalie's discomfort from smoke inhalation was soothed by a couple of Ibuprofen. The walk through pine forest the loose shall tracks took us past a number of Tarahumara settlements: kids playing games, women weaving baskets, men chopping wood and old ladies where you'd hope you never saw old ladies was spectacular, and beautiful but another humbling reveal of the lives lived by some.

The trek out of the canyon was strenuous, especially for Nathalie as the ibuprofen had worn off and the exertion from the climb that her smoke seared lungs and throat were singing a chorus "what the hell are you doing hiking a canyon today little lady, we're on strike?" The Bacardi Anejo I'd been carry for emergencies didn't help either. We returned to the Chepe the next day for the final part of the train journey to the Los Mochis on the pacific and again were blown away by the vastness and deepness and the sheer "ness" of the landscape we passed through. One amazing vista, after another, after another.

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Photos

Hailing CHEPE
The Chihuahua to Pacific Railway

Nathalie in Batopilas
After her siesta and wandering the streets looking for Jason