World Mexico Chihuahua Creel

FULLTIMING WITH SUE, JOHN AND ARNIE From Puerto Vallarta to Dallas

Copper Canyon Tour - Day 1 Feb 6, 2008

Because Bill Trimble, the campground owner, was away on a trip to the state capital yesterday, we were uncertain about our Copper Canyon plans today. But Trini, Bill’s number one assistant and dog sitter, stopped by last night and reassured us that everything would be OK for our trip. Bill showed up at 7:00 this morning and after a couple of phone calls confirmed that we were ready to go. At about 7:40 we said goodbye to Arnie and jumped into Jose’s Taxi for the ten minute drive to the train station.

El Fuerte Train Station

All we knew for sure at this point was that we were taking the train to a station called Posada Barrancas and that the hotel was owned and managed by a lady named Maria. Bill said that, “Maria will take care of everything.”

We waited for over an hour for the train as the crowd grew. There was a map next to the station showing the route

Mapa

that we would take and a couple of interesting features, most notably the switchbacks at Temoris. When the train arrived we were assigned our seats by a porter and found ourselves on the left side of the train. This proved to be the wrong side for scenery, but it didn’t matter a great deal as people moved around a lot.

Sue and I went to the dining car just about the time that the train was approaching Temoris. We were able to sit at a table on the right side of the car and enjoyed a nice meal of chicken quesadillas as we approached the switchbacks. Temoris

Temoris Switchbacks

proved to be a fascinating piece of railroad engineering that is a model railroader’s dream.

After lunch we drifted back to the lounge car where Social Susie struck up a conversation with two young Mexican folks who turned out to be girlfriend and boyfriend.

Lounge Car Friends

She was from La Paz and he was from Santa Rosalia, both on the Baja. It turned out that they were both dentists and were on a vacation trip to the canyons. It was a great chance for them to practice English and us to practice Spanish!

When the train pulled into the station at San Rafael, only a short distance from our destination, we had our first exposure to the Tarahumara native population. A number of women met the train to sell baskets

Tarahumara Basket Seller

that they had made.

About fifteen minutes later we arrived at Posada Barrancas and disembarked the train in search of Maria. We were immediately greeted by a young man named Edgar who spoke excellent English and escorted to a small van where I inquired if we were in the right van for “Maria”. We were assured that everything was OK and the van took four of us up the hill to our hotel, La Mansion Tarahumara.

We were shown to our very nice bungalow accommodation and fifteen minutes later met Victor for our walking tour to the canyon’s edge. As we walked toward the canyon there were three Tarahumara children selling baskets and shawls.

Tarahumara Children

Although the baskets were made by the local population, the shawls were manufactured in Chihuahua and sold to the natives for resale at the canyon.

We proceeded along the trail for our first view of the canyon. Actually the Copper Canyon (Barraca means canyon) is comprised of seven canyons and five rivers. Our first view was of the Urique River Canyon.

Urique Canyon

We returned to the hotel and at seven o’clock had our first meal in the dining hall. We were seated with a couple who had ridden from the train station and walked with us on the canyon walk. They were Les and Sandy Beal from Eight Four, Pennsylvania. Victor told us that the four of us would be joining him for a tour of Creel and other canyon spots tomorrow.