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Published: December 7th 2006
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Wednesday- by minivan
The minivan ride was five hours and at least half the way was on unpaved rocky roads on the rim of the canyon, without gaurdrails and on roads not wide enough for two vehicles to pass in many places. It was thrilling, and a little nauseating. Again, we didn't know what we were looking for and almost got off at the wrong stop again, due to confusing signs. But everyone was friendly and helpful and pointed out our mistake before it was too late.
One man who met the bus when we finally got to Batopilas was very insistent that we stay in his guest rooms, but we had our minds set on staying at ____'s and went in search of it. Batopilas is a small laid back town where business don't have signs or regular business hours and most restaurants don't have menus. At least that was our experience. People also ate earlier there and shut down earlier for the night. When we found the hotel it was almost by accident since it did not have a sign out front. We went into the foyer and waited for someone to greet us. and waited. and
rang the bell. and hollered hello. Finally a man came by and asked if he could help and we told him we wanted a room with air conditioning and he led us to our room and took our money. Come to find, the owner had just left for vacation in Creel. We were the only guests of the hotel during our stay and we think the man that gave us our room was the gardener. He turned off the swamp cooler on the second day and left and we could not find where to turn it back on so we switched ourselves to a bunk room with a window unit. The hotel had a beautiful courtyard and looked out onto the river. It had lime trees and mango trees and some kind of orange trees. beautiful and all to ourselves. We had lunch at a restaurant in a different hotel, the one that everyone else visiting town was staying at, and wandered around town to get our bearings. We headed back to the hotel when the dark clouds rolling in over the rim of the canyon broke and it began to rain hard. We watched the rain for a while,
thinking it would let up quickly like the previous days' afternoon showers. After a while, we decided it was a good time for a nap. We woke up in time for dinner and went in search of it. It was eight, but it seemed most everyone had had dinner. the establishments that advertised themselves as restaurants did not appear to be open and where we could see people eating, there was no sign indicating that it was other than someone's home. We were getting hungry. we ran into some men talking in the street and one came over to see if we needed any help. he talked about the restaurants and soon about giving tours, and introduced himself as Arturo. Ah, Kevin asked if he knew Adreana and he said he did and she was coming in in the next day or two. We arranged for him to give us a tour of the lost cathedral in Destivo (?), the abandoned silver mines, and the old hacienda starting at nine and lasting we approximated three hours the next day. He pointed us towards a restaurant and we were on our way.
We couldn't find the restaurant Arturo had talked
Destivo from the back
I love these cactus. There were fields of them. about, so we went back to Maria's hotel and sat down to dinner there. It was busier than it had been for lunch. A man at one of the tables said hello to us and after a brief conversation across tables, invited us to join them. They told us how they were down from California with a group called Help the Tarahumadras. They raised money all year for two trips down to Copper Canyon where they bought tons of corn and beans and reams of cloth and took it out to distribute to the Terahumara who live in the Canyon. They invited us to join them, but we told them we'd just made plans for the next day.
Thursday- by foot
The next day we met Arturo outside our hotel at 9am and drove out to Destivo. We ran into the men from California on the way; Destivo was their first stop. They had advertised, so there were many Tarahumara in town to collect the corn and beans. We looked at the cathedral, went with Arturo to the store while he talked with his friend, then we helped distribute food for a few minutes. It must have taken some
time, because Arturo wanted to stop for a lunch break before heading to the mines. Kevin and I went into a restaurant, one that had a sign and appeared to be open. The waitress came out and asked what we would like and gave us a list of things she could make with what she had on hand. It was good. We met back up with Arturo and on the way to the mines ran into Adreana backpacking in to town. She hopped in the back of Arturo's pickup and went to the mines with us. Arturo did not speak english and Kevin was only half paying attention to what Arturo was saying, but Adreana made sure I got the jist of the tour. It was of course dark and cool and clammy. There's rumor that some surveyor thinks there's more silver to be had from the mines and that the mines will reopen, but Adreana assured me the same rumor had been around five years ago when she'd worked there.
We went to the old hacienda and looked around. Arturo stopped to talk with some of his friends there too. Apparently one of his friends had just recently
been shot in a dispute with someone and that was the topic of conversation for the most part. After a while, we walked back to Arturo's truck and he drove us back to our hotel. It was much later than we had planned. We went to dinner at a restaurant without a sign, one we had thought might be someone's home the night before. We were right on both counts. After dinner we walked around the town some more and took pictures of the plazas. A group of children were playing soccer on the main plaza and a store we had not noticed before was open right off the plaza to serve snacks and drinks. We got a gatorade and a snickers bar and went back to our hotel to pack, planning on catching the 5am bus back to Creel.
Adreanna found us at the hotel and asked about our plans. She had been talking to Arturo trying to figure out how to help him get his son home from school. She asked if we would be willing to pay him what we would pay for the bus ride to have him drive us back to Creel- it would
pay for his gas to go pick up his son. We could leave later in the morning. We were sold.
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