Barrancas Del Cobre

Can you imagine driving your van down the Grand Canyon? Of course not, there is no road. But in the corner of northwest Mexico called Chihuahua there are six huge canyons more than a mile deep and because they supposedly are covered in a greenish hue they call them collectively the Copper Canyon. 

We drove GANNET2 down toward the village at the bottom called Batopilas, 24 miles of zigs and zags. 

Honestly I had no intention of driving the canyon until I saw the road to the rim was paved. It used to be hellacious, dirt one lane with no guard rails or anything. No way was I going to risk our home on a dirt mountain track. But pavement, well that’s different! 

Layne hates heights but she was game and I promised we’d turn back if it got too gnarly and I really wasn’t sure how much fun this would be. The approach road to the rim was in rather poor condition, especially considering it was paved just two years ago. I think the tar is made of rice paper! 

You know you are entering the main canyon when the road, surrounded by pine trees, starts to dip and go down hill, which is when the nervous van driver puts his van into manual first gear. 

See the cow above? It’s ambling on the approach road. Below you see the scrub on rock and the angle of descent. Oh and a guard rail propping up a fallen rock. There’s lots of those on the downhill zig zags, just one more thing. 

We were nervous, I cannot deny it. Layne was looking out across the void but I was watching the road. One great thing: there was not any other traffic air I did not have to hug the edge! 

The building below was unoccupied it turned out. It was lonely. 

I have no idea what mangled the guard rails. I don’t know how you can drive this without paying attention, without having good brakes and so on. But there was lots of mangling along the way. 

Whoever engineered the road did not plan for rock falls or washouts so there is gravel everywhere making a one lane road essentially! 

Some bits were excellent! Enjoy the view… carefully. 

Some bits were rather rough! Down we went.

At least here we had berms on each side of the sole lane left through the landslide. No problem! 

Retaining walls anyone? Cement? 

The best part was the sign warning of airborne problems! No kidding…we worried just a little something might fall on our heads. 

I don’t know if it’s copper colored but the views are spectacular of course. It’s not at all like the Grand Canyon which is much more stark and sculpted. The Barrancas are huge and deep  but the greenery and growth softens the stark desert lines of the Grand Canyon. 

Mexico’s loneliest souvenir shop. 

Notice how we are hugging the left lane away from the rim!

Halfway down the canyon we came across this problem, so I stopped and walked it. Bear in mind the road from the village of Batopilas in the canyon to the coast is extremely rough by all accounts with water crossings and conditions that require four wheel drive. If we went down we had to come up. 

I looked down the one track fort trail across the huge mudslide and I puckered. It was steeper than it looks and I pondered how we’d get back up. Going down would have been easy enough, rolling and staying away from the edge. 

The problem coming back up would be the slippery soft surface with no room to maneuver. I stepped to the edge and looked down…straight down. 

I could see no tree post or boulder to anchor the winch and if we started to slip we could easily slide off the edge. That’s happened before to us in Guatemala however in that case the ditch was a foot deep and the winch dealt with our inability to go up. Our van weighs 9300 pounds which is a lot of mass in less than perfect circumstances. 

Beyond all those considerations we were still twelve miles from Batopilas and we had no guarantees the rest of the road was in perfect condition.

It just didn’t seem worth it. We have it our best shot plus we were in a wide spot where we could actually around. So we did.

It would seem obvious wouldn’t it that where goats wander Promasters probably shouldn’t. The crosses confirm some other people haven’t been so lucky. We kept moving. 

It was a relief to climb out of the place with no further problems. We felt turning back was the right thing and had no regrets. 

There’s an old gravel pit a few miles up beyond the rim and we stopped for the night. A few cars went by but we had a very quiet night under the nearly full moon. 

Rusty loves the spot all to himself after a full day driving. He was happy. 

And  so were we with chili for dinner and the prospect of temperatures in the 50s overnight, good sleeping weather. 

And Starlink to make up for the absence of a phone signal all day. Not everyone likes to be in touch but we enjoy having this amazing satellite connection. 

Great wild camping all to ourselves. 

I find it hard to scoff at our good fortune and our gadgets when the locals, Tarahumara Indians in this case carry trees home on their backs. 

Rusty led the way to total relaxation. 

Just as well as we had some wild mountain driving ahead through empty mountains to and beyond the little town of Creel where Copper Canyon tours originate. 

Francisco Villa In Parral

In the United States he’s known as Pancho Villa, in Mexico and most especially in his native Chihuahua he’s known as General Francisco Villa, and after decades of neglect they love him, at least the people who think about him at all tend to revere him. 

The melodrama of his death is recorded fully in the museum dedicated to his memory in Parral. Francisco Villa was in retirement when he was gunned down on July 20th 1923 outside the building dedicated to him as a museum since just 1967. His body has been moved to Mexico City as he is now officially a national hero who led the war in the north during the 1914 revolution.

Six hours after he died driving his car on the streets of Parral they made a death mask of the General including at least one fatal shot to the forehead. Some people report his last words as “Don’t let me be remembered like this, tell them I said something important,” but in point of fact he died instantly in a hail of bullets. Four of his six bodyguards also died and his Secretary Miguel Trillio sitting next to Villa who was driving, also died in the hail of bullets from six conspirators hidden in the museum building. Just like that: 

One bodyguard played dead and survived by hiding under the car. Two injured men ran toward the River Parral under a bridge nearby. That’s the brown structure above the white car in the photo below, beyond Villa’s statue: 

The conspirators caught one of the fugitive bodyguards and shot him to death. The other injured man got away. Thus ended the life of the hero of the revolution, three years retired on a ranch given to him by the government. He lived there surrounded by loyal former fighters safe from the numerous enemies he had made.  He was only in town for a family baptism and to spend a couple of nights with his mistress before driving his 1922 Dodge convertible back to his home across the state line in northern Durango. On this trip he only had four bodyguards with him.  

As assassinations  go it was pretty dramatic but the reason for the murder of the retired revolutionary is not completely clear even today. The guy in black below is blamed as the “intellectual author” of the murder but there were other powerful figures known to be involved. Why? No one knows for sure but after the sudden death, Villa’s memory faded from public view. 

Some historians think President Àlvaro Obregon had to have given at least consent if not active approval of the plot to kill Villa. A congressman called Jesus Salas confessed to the killing and was sentenced to 20 years before his sentence was almost instantly commuted and he was released after a few months. And that was that. Villa was buried the next day after a huge procession through town and later his body was moved to Mexico City. 

Villa was a sturdy peasant, a man of impressive leadership skills and great military prowess even though he lost a few critical battles. He knew the value of publicity so there are lots of heroic photos of him you may have seen. They are reproduced in the museum of course! 

In retirement running his 160,000 acre farm as a worker’s cooperative: 

A life of adventure! Misspellings included! 

The Communist journalist John Reed who gained fame in the Russian Revolution rode with Villa and wrote a stark account of the miseries of life on the front lines. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In the photo below the man with the thin face and blanket-like coat is General Toribio Ortega credited with starting the revolution of 1914 which devastated Mexico for years. He revolted against the dictator Porfirio Diaz in 1910 and died of typhus in Chihuahua in 1914 a year after the photo was taken. 

Villa said he liked women horses and cock fighting most in life but he also like to ride his Indian motorcycle. He lived large. 

His biggest and weirdest strategic error came on the morning of March 9th 1916 when hundreds of his remaining soldiers attacked Columbus, New Mexico. Villa’s dwindling army had been recently defeated at Agua Prieta by President Venustiano Carranza’s forces supported by arms sales from the US government. It’s suspected that was the reason Villa decided to exact revenge by invading the US his former supporter. The predawn raid took the city and the 13th Cavalry garrison by surprise, and in the 90 minutes it took to defeat Villa and push him back, the city was torched and pillaged. 18 Americans died and about 80 Mexicans were killed. The first invasion of the US since 1812 and the last until Japan took some of the Aleutian Islands in World War Two. 

General Pershing was in charge of the pursuit of Villa in Chihuahua and the US army returned the compliment by invading Mexico and hounding Villa across the desert. They never caught him but they made the point. 

By 1920 the quirky unrepentant revolutionary had made a whole raft of enemies. President Venustiano Carranza was assassinated in May 1920 and President Adolfo de la Huerta decided to call a truce by giving land to Villa and his 250 hard core followers if Villa promised to take up branching and retire from politics.  Huerta quit as President in November and Villa’s sworn enemy Alvaro Obregon became President. 

The assassinations revolutions murders and plots of Mexican politics are enough to make your head spin and the turbulent era was as bad as any. Villa made tons of enemies as he waged war in his own back yard, northern Mexico. I suppose it was inevitable he should die a violent death. He was a man of principle surrounded by politicians of the worst type and perhaps because of that I really rather like him. I wish I could have been there like John Reed watching him on the front lines. In his private life he was a mess seducing any woman he fancied with no respect for anyone. As a politician he was a failure because he had no ability to compromise which sounds fantastic except he was in a world full of compromises and shifting loyalties. His saving grace was that he knew it. What you can admire as a leader is hard to admire as a man. What I find fascinating is the confusion of morality. 

The bed used to lay out his body preparatory to burial: 

I loved being at the museum and seeing the spot I had read about. I can’t say I like Villa the man but I am totally absorbed by his story of success and failure. He must have been a powerful threat if he had to be murdered even when retired. I found no answers but more questions at the site. 

Parral, a charming town of 110,000 residents worthy of a proper visit. Founded in 1631 as a mining town it produced vast quantities of silver till 1930 when it was pretty much abandoned. We found it to be lively and quite charming in our brief time there. 

42 Pesos = $2.40

Sorry about this lengthy exposition of my obsession. Up next: more road trip including the Copper Canyon.