We are Back! Copper Canyon post 1

The week in the Copper Canyon was all we wanted it to be and then some. Just like the Grand Canyon and other natural wonders…its really to hard to capture the feel and the experience in words. Although I have not been to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon….from the pics I have seen, a lot of the Copper Canyon is like that. At Creel, the elevation was 7800 feet I think…so a lot of pine forest mixed with desert flora and shrub. The Copper Canyon is actually a series of mountain ranges and enormous canyons. The depth from peak to base is actually deeper than the Grand Canyon, and the overall size of the “area” of the Copper Canyon much larger too…the grandeur is not quite the same. It is gorgeous, stupendous, beautiful, incredible and all that….

Since we do not have a car…the trip just to get to the region was fun in itself. We took a local 7:30am bus from Alamos to Navajoa; a 45 minute trip for 2 bucks each. In Navojoa, we caught another 3 hour bus to Los Mochis on the Sea of Cortez for 6 bucks. This is where most global travelers fly into for their Copper Canyon trips. In Mochis, we caught a 3rd bus to El Fuerte, about an hour plus for 4 bucks. Good deal to get across the state of Sonora, and down to the train for the Canyon.

Getting off in Los Mochis we had no idea how to get a local bus to El Fuerte…we waddled with our packs down the main drag looking for something that might resemble a bus station. Finally, I stopped a woman and asked in Spanish “donde esta el autobuses para El Fuerte?” She scratched her head and spoke way too fast for me to catch a single word…but as she began to point down and across the street, an old green school bus came careening around the corner with an old man in a cowboy hat riding shotgun in the stairwell of the bus, waving at Lisa and I, obvious tourists looking for something, yelling “El Fuerte? El Fuerte?!”. We waved and yelled back “Si!! Si!!”, the bus stopped traffic as we jumped on and away we went…perfect!

This bus was fun. Local people on their way around the area. An old grizzled woman with sun baked lines in her face like a weathered prune was in the middle of absolutely nowhere on the highway and flagged down the bus. She had a 100 year old wooden-wheeled wheelbarrow filled with potatoes. The bus pulled over, the old guy riding shot gun loaded the potatoes, left the old woman, and off we went! I wonder if the bus fare is the same for potatoes as it is for us?

We arrived in El Fuerte around 1:30 pm, and got a ride up to Rio Vista Lodge. A place that we had scoped out on the web, and was recommended by a friend in Alamos. It turned out to be a great spot, clean, nice room on a great bluff looking over the El Fuerte River. We walked the town, had a few margarita’s with a tour group at the Lodge, then got a bite for dinner…the train leaves early the next morning. El Fuerte is nice, genuine old colonial town in Mexico that dates to 1564. Not a lot of reason to go there, other than to catch the train to the Canyon. A few really beautiful restored hacienda style hotels, and a nice plaza…but due to proximity to the river, the town is filled with small biting gnats, or no-seeums that leave nasty welts. Every tourist in town was covered with tiny mosquito like bites. Ours too, appeared en masse the next day….nasty beasts!

I’ll post more later so these don’t get too long.