Copper Canyon: Creel to Chihuahua

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Today I went on a tour of Creel. I spent an hour yesterday afternoon shopping around for an English speaking tour so I chose this particular one for that reason. But this morning I discovered the tour guide spoke no English. Thankfully there was a Moroccan tourist in the group who works as an English-Spanish-French-Arabic intepreter for Amnesty International. He was on holiday but kindly offered to translate for me. We got along really well and exchanged email addresses. I'm building up quite a list of contacts for when/if I get out of Latin America! The other people on the tour were a father and his two kids from Juarez.

First stop on the tour was the 400-year-old, San Ignacio Mission, built by the Jesuits, which is a property with a population of 500 Indians. It has little wooden houses, a medical cottage and a school. The little Indian kids will do anything to scam one peso off the tourists. Instead I paid the little girls in traditional outfits five pesos for a photo. Other tourists take photos of them for free but I feel slack for doing that. We saw a five year old girl (I overheard her tell a tourist her age) with a baby strapped to her back selling crafts to tourists. It was the strangest sight to see someone so little holding a little baby on her back, the poor baby's head was hanging back awkwardly. I guess they've got to pull tricks like that to get the tourist dollars.

After the Mission we stopped at some rock formations, apparently in the forms of a frog, elephant and something else I couldn't make out.

Then we arrived at Cusarare Cascade, the part I booked the tour for. It was magnificent! This waterfall was a 3km (1.85mi) hike through pine trees and along the river. And after yesterday's fearless ledge walk, I paid $10 to fly across the top of the cascade on a flying fox. It was bloody unreal and something I'd never do in Sydney. I asked the guys running it whether I could get stuck as I saw someone else get stuck a quarter of the way from the end. They said I wouldn't but low and behold I did. They threw me a rope but didn't explain beforehand what I was supposed to do with it. So I tied it onto another rope and they pulled me to the end. A ten year old boy did it after me so I didn't feel that brave but I had the shakes for half an hour afterwards. So now I've decided that I'm going to do the Canyoning and White Water Rafting optional extra tours offered in South America. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at Lake Agugua, which was a lovely way to end the tour.

The train trip from Creel to Chihuahua took six hours. I didn't get to my hotel until 10.30pm. This is the last stop and I'm here for two days. After seeing so many cowboys on this trip, I've been inspired to get myself a pair of authentic cowboy boots and apparently Chihuahua is the best place in Mexico to get them.

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Comments

[Christina]

Flying fox??
Far out, you have a lot more courage than I do! I wouldn't get on one of those for US$10m...I'm terrified of heights!