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Creel, Chihuahua
May. 22nd, 2005 08:00 pmRyan and I are in Creel now, a little mountain town that is sort of a midpoint on the Chihuahua-Pacific railroad through the Copper Canyon. It feels like a mountain town, too. There are kids running about everywhere. It is clean and relaxed. A lot different than the baja towns we've been through.
We're staying at the most excellent hostel here--Casa Margarita, a wonderful place run by a woman who I assume to be Margarita. Eighty pesos a night (about eight dollars) gets you a bed, bunk, or, in my case, sofa for the night, and delicious home-cooked breakfast and dinner. (Tonight was chili reano-- I didn't want that chili to end!) The place is impeccably clean, too, and at dinner we're joined by a score of energetic little kids, around 12 years old--like it doubles as an orphanage or something. Some of them earn their keep by meeting people at the train station and bringing them to the hostel. Everyone seems happy--it's a very nice place.
We got here by taking the ferry from La Paz (at the end of Baja) to Topolobampa, a port on the mainland.
Watching the ferry unload is a sight to see--it's an orgy of diesel trucks, all racing off the ship, and crazy ferry terminal drivers unloading trailers, and then eager trucks loading one deck while the other deck is still unloading. It's just unbelievable how many 18-wheelers you can fit on a boat, and even more amazing that none of them ended up in the ocean during the unloading process. Cargo was everything from a truck full to the brim with chili peppers to another carrying compressed natural gas (seemed like a disaster in the making) and another with liquified CO2.
I canvassed the boat for other travelers and other Americans, hoping to make friends and find a ride out of town from the ferry terminal to Los Mochis, where the train station is.
In Topolobampa we missed the bus out of town so we took a taxi--what we didn't know when negotiating the taxi was that the driver had already sold the back seats and the trunk was already full. So Ryan and I shared the front seat and our backpacks were strapped precariously to the pile of luggage in the open trunk. Hilarious! The man was nice, though, and took us right to our hotel in Los Mochis, a cheap but friendly place where we spent all of five hours before beginning the next part of our adventure: the railroad through the copper canyon!
With nearly 90 tunnels between Los Mochis and Chihuahua, the Ferrocarril Chihuahua-Pacific is a bit of a brute force effort, but the results are thrilling. We weren't disappointed. One can only imagine just how incredibly spectacular the canyon is after the rainy season--we saw dozens of dried-up or mostly-dried-up waterfalls. The little villages along the way grow everything from peaches to papayas.
On the train I met two Brazilian girls who are exchange students to Mexico City. I was, of course, in love instantaneously.
Today Ryan and I rented bicycles and went exploring the area around Creel. Hopping on the mountain bikes we suddenly realized that our lungs hadn{t yet caught up with our trip from sea level to 7000 ft--it was tough going! There is an ejido/communal land holding here for the Tarahumara people, an indigenous people who live here, in caves and log cabins, and combination log cabin-caves. For $2 you can enter their land for hiking and biking. The area is very pretty--arid high desert pine forest, lots of weird rock formations. We biked to a mountain lake and went swimming.
The rough plan from here on out:
tomorrow (monday): hitchhike to Chihuahua, catch an all-night bus for Zapatecas
tuesday: arrive in Zapatecas, frolic about, stay in the hostel there
wednesday: in the morning take the bus to Guanajuato. stay in Guanajuato
thursday: bus to mexico city. stay in mexico city
friday: mexico city
saturday: flight from mexico city to LAX in the morning
I posted some pictures on my flickr account, which you can also see by friending or reading![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
flickr_tobo. I haven{t been able to upload all of my pictures though because the connection is not the speediest.
My current conundrum is whether I can buy an Orbitz itinerary, but then not show up for the first leg, only the second? Will they cancel the second flight on the itinerary if I don't show up for the first? Bizarrely this scheme would save me $100. Anyone know?
Mexico is a travelling wonderland. I don't know why I didn?t come here before. In the hostel here I've met tons of people--two guys from Germany, an Israeli who just arrived today, a French-Irish girl... and all the Mexicans have been super too.
We're staying at the most excellent hostel here--Casa Margarita, a wonderful place run by a woman who I assume to be Margarita. Eighty pesos a night (about eight dollars) gets you a bed, bunk, or, in my case, sofa for the night, and delicious home-cooked breakfast and dinner. (Tonight was chili reano-- I didn't want that chili to end!) The place is impeccably clean, too, and at dinner we're joined by a score of energetic little kids, around 12 years old--like it doubles as an orphanage or something. Some of them earn their keep by meeting people at the train station and bringing them to the hostel. Everyone seems happy--it's a very nice place.
We got here by taking the ferry from La Paz (at the end of Baja) to Topolobampa, a port on the mainland.
Watching the ferry unload is a sight to see--it's an orgy of diesel trucks, all racing off the ship, and crazy ferry terminal drivers unloading trailers, and then eager trucks loading one deck while the other deck is still unloading. It's just unbelievable how many 18-wheelers you can fit on a boat, and even more amazing that none of them ended up in the ocean during the unloading process. Cargo was everything from a truck full to the brim with chili peppers to another carrying compressed natural gas (seemed like a disaster in the making) and another with liquified CO2.
I canvassed the boat for other travelers and other Americans, hoping to make friends and find a ride out of town from the ferry terminal to Los Mochis, where the train station is.
In Topolobampa we missed the bus out of town so we took a taxi--what we didn't know when negotiating the taxi was that the driver had already sold the back seats and the trunk was already full. So Ryan and I shared the front seat and our backpacks were strapped precariously to the pile of luggage in the open trunk. Hilarious! The man was nice, though, and took us right to our hotel in Los Mochis, a cheap but friendly place where we spent all of five hours before beginning the next part of our adventure: the railroad through the copper canyon!
With nearly 90 tunnels between Los Mochis and Chihuahua, the Ferrocarril Chihuahua-Pacific is a bit of a brute force effort, but the results are thrilling. We weren't disappointed. One can only imagine just how incredibly spectacular the canyon is after the rainy season--we saw dozens of dried-up or mostly-dried-up waterfalls. The little villages along the way grow everything from peaches to papayas.
On the train I met two Brazilian girls who are exchange students to Mexico City. I was, of course, in love instantaneously.
Today Ryan and I rented bicycles and went exploring the area around Creel. Hopping on the mountain bikes we suddenly realized that our lungs hadn{t yet caught up with our trip from sea level to 7000 ft--it was tough going! There is an ejido/communal land holding here for the Tarahumara people, an indigenous people who live here, in caves and log cabins, and combination log cabin-caves. For $2 you can enter their land for hiking and biking. The area is very pretty--arid high desert pine forest, lots of weird rock formations. We biked to a mountain lake and went swimming.
The rough plan from here on out:
tomorrow (monday): hitchhike to Chihuahua, catch an all-night bus for Zapatecas
tuesday: arrive in Zapatecas, frolic about, stay in the hostel there
wednesday: in the morning take the bus to Guanajuato. stay in Guanajuato
thursday: bus to mexico city. stay in mexico city
friday: mexico city
saturday: flight from mexico city to LAX in the morning
I posted some pictures on my flickr account, which you can also see by friending or reading
flickr_tobo. I haven{t been able to upload all of my pictures though because the connection is not the speediest.My current conundrum is whether I can buy an Orbitz itinerary, but then not show up for the first leg, only the second? Will they cancel the second flight on the itinerary if I don't show up for the first? Bizarrely this scheme would save me $100. Anyone know?
Mexico is a travelling wonderland. I don't know why I didn?t come here before. In the hostel here I've met tons of people--two guys from Germany, an Israeli who just arrived today, a French-Irish girl... and all the Mexicans have been super too.
