We failed to get to the bottom of the Copper Canyon but we did get an excellent night’s sleep on the rim in our private gravel quarry.
We’d spent the previous night sleeping on the street in Parral and the day driving up out of the desert into the mountains so we were tired. It was a slow start to the day pottering around, an exercise video, reading, wandering into the woods with Rusty and finally tearing ourselves away. Two cars drove by all morning so we hoped to have the mountains to ourselves.
Did we ever!
Welcome to the Sierra Madre. No people, hardly any villages, no topes (speed bumps) but tons of potholes and ripped up asphalt.
The scenery was more spectacular than I can show. We drove for hours seeing a couple of pick ups traveling at high speed and a few logging trucks steaming slowly up the grades. We only ever saw a couple of buses, full sized modern coaches actually so of traffic over the course of a day we saw almost no vehicles.
We were mostly between six and eight thousand feet with daytime highs in the low eighties and overnight lows in the mid 50s. The sky was that deep mountain blue and the light was bright like winters in the tropics. It was invigorating.
We were driving for Creel, a small town high in the mountains known as the tour center for the Copper Canyon and home to a large population of Tarahumara Indians.
A Christian shrine, a reminder of the dangers of not paying attention on this winding road, of driving too fast of not knowing perhaps how to drive in the snow because up here winters are real. That’s why we came in June as we are allergic to snow and ice!
It just went on and on, twenty miles per hour on the hairpins, slowing almost to a stop for the most torn up sections speeding up to 40 mph on the straightaways and feeling like we were hurtling recklessly. It was a long day.
The Tarahumara waved when we passed them on foot but it seemed like a trained behavior “wave to the tourists; they spend money” but most locals around here had this kind of blank look when we passed:
You can’t blame them, I know lots of people in Key West sick of making a living off tourists and having to be nice. This area is desperately poor and us showing up in a van wasn’t going to make for sudden prosperity for anyone. But at the same time we weren’t enticed to hang around inhabited areas.
The physical beauty takes your breath away, the human cost of this isolation gives you pause. I never saw a wheelbarrow up here. I know that sounds odd but in Mexico everywhere you go you see wheelbarrows for sale and in use. They are the pickups of the poor and of those too elderly or marginalized to get a drivers license. Not here, the cheapest wheels are nowhere to be seen.
The Western Sierra Madre is 750 miles long stretching from the US border south to Jalisco and it’s the largest and possibly least visited wilderness in Mexico. I know that now! It is home to poverty and incredible beauty and we drove one thin line through it.
We had high hopes for the town of Creel (pro: krill) named for a governor of Chihuahua State whose family originated in Ulster. It was a railroad station on the Pacific railroad line from Chihuahua and grew to be a logging center. Originally the city was built as an agricultural training town to teach Raramuri Indians Mexican culture and methods. It has a population of 5,000 and is sustained these days by tourism.
One thing about travel is that two people can see the same place and come away with a completely different view of an experience. We expected to be fascinated by Creel, and we talked of not one but two nights which is more than it sounds as we were driving to meet the tooth implant deadline.
There is no campground and the two hotels listed on iOverlander as parking places seem to have stopped wasting time with vehicle travelers. Layne found a pet friendly hotel which we planned to investigate.
But as we walked around Creel we shy’ed away from the notion of spending time here. Layne walked the square looking for souvenirs while I followed Rusty on an exploration all his own which is how he ended up in the church garden forcing me to lead him out under astonished disapproving stares.
There are expensive inns to accommodate travelers who arrive by train through the Copper Canyon. We saw gringos on mountain bikes but we felt no connection to the town. We felt like intruders.
Perhaps if we were to return Creel we would feel different, but I doubt I shall return. I enjoyed the woods and the wild camping a lot more than Layne did and perhaps had we not felt the dentist deadline pressure we might have driven less and camped more and felt more rested.
We bought tacos for lunch, simple and delicious. The woman selling them had no small talk so we learned nothing about the town. I suppose expecting conversation to sauce a one dollar taco is asking a lot, certainly in Creel.
We bought gas in the way out at the most expensive gas station in Mexico. There were two in town and they were both around six bucks a gallon for regular (24 pesos a liter). The pump attendant looked perplexed for a moment as I laughed about the price comparing it to cheaper gas in Parral. Then he brightened up and said at the coast they charge even more. No they don’t but I pretended to look concerned instead. The gas station dog looked neglected so I have it two handful of cookies. Layne have a dirty small boy twenty pesos, failed attempts to make our middle class selves feel better.
I thought of Ansel Adams in Taos and switched my Panasonic to black and white.
The freshness of the open road was a relief. We looked for somewhere to stay for the night.
Bye bye Creel, all the best.
We got an idea that we should head to the coast and stay a few days at a campground we visited last year in the small town of Alamos (“poplar trees”). They have hot showers, electrical plug ins and a lovely pool. And the pizza delivery is outstanding. A little suburbia after a few days of wilderness. That sounded good to us.
More crappy roads with gorgeous views and no signs of life!
We hadn’t had a phone signal since Parral so we could only get online was if we stopped and deployed Starlink. However the iOverlander app can be read offline too and when Layne went looking she found this lovely entry relating to the main road to the coast, Highway 16.
Well we thought to ourselves we might do better to stop on this less trafficked road before we reach the junction with Highway 16. The red dot below marks roughly where we stopped in a flat spot. Which we also listed on iOverlander for future travelers.
It’s easy to let your imagination run away with you as night falls around your unarmed tin box but in fact we slept beautifully on a silent crisp night. The sky was clear and the stars before moonrise were exceptional.
Rusty was energized by the cool air at 7600 feet. You could hear a car coming from miles away but we only saw a few cars and logging trucks in the time we were there.
A cold Victoria and time to contemplate. Some van life youngsters complain about the uncertainty of finding places to sleep and the absence of certainty. I find those drawbacks stimulating. You just never know how lucky you will be. I awoke at three in the morning to cold air nipping my nose and absolute total silence.
Up next: our twelve hour day leaving the forests turned into a rather tiresome cross country rubble fest. Mexico and it’s surprises.
