C

Road from Creel to Guachochi

The photo at right was taken looking back at the road we had just driven while our poor Escort recovered from its exertion. It also illustrates, however, the magnificence of the countryside we were driving through. You can imagine that it was no hardship to have to stop and drink in this view. The air was cool and dry, the sun was warm, and surely all was right with the world! We cannot stress enough how beautiful Mexico's mountainous regions are and this is just one example.

Because we were uncertain as to what facilities we would find in Guachochi we took time out before leaving Creel to get in one more session of Internet. Nonetheless we were ready to drive out of town by 10 p.m. with Jan behind the wheel for the first time since the watermelon incident. The road to Guachochi first took us past the Tarahumara San Ignacio reservation and then Lake Arrerego and finally past the turnoff to the Cusarare waterfall.

Our near-term goal was not Guachochi but Batopilas. Gerry was hoping against hope that all the guidebooks were wrong and that the road to Batopilas, a village in the bottom of the copper canyon, was drivable in our car. But first, we had to get down into the bottom of the rio Urique canyon and climb back out of it again.

Friends from Delphi, Matamoros

As we were halfway up we noticed a lookout point with cars parked and pulled out to ourselves. No sooner had we parked the car than we heard the ominous gurgling noise that announced that the car was overheating. We were happy to have stopped. We got chatting to a group from a nearby SUV and learned that they were colleagues from a maquilladora in Matamoros, one American and three Mexicans and that they had come from Batopilas. The news was not encouraging. They all agreed that we would never make it in our low-slung passenger car. Before saying goodbye, they recommended that we visit Real de Quatorce which we put on our list of must-sees. We turned our attention to the view and then believing the car had cooled down enough, off we set again. But it was not to be. After only a short climb, we had trouble again and so pulled off the road again and this time hunkered down for 20 minutes to give the car plenty of time to recover. We had no trouble for the rest of the drive either because Gerry took over driving or because the remaining parts of the road were not as steep.

Sandro & Yvonne

In another hour we were at the turnoff to Batopilas and immediately confirmed what the guys at the lookout had told us: much too rough for our vehicle. Disheartened, we drove on to Guachochi, stopping to admire the view every so often. About an hour out of Guachochi we caught sight of two cyclists ahead of us on the road. We were sure it was Sandro and Yvonne, a Swiss couple we had met at the Cusarare waterfall two days ago. We passed them, waving and then stopped the car so that they could catch up to us and chat for a moment. We agreed to try and meet in town even though neither couple knew where we would be staying.

Then it was on to town. We passed the nice looking Los Cumbres (the Peaks) on the way into town and made a mental note. We saw nothing that matched it in town, so drove back and for once managed to negotiate a substantial discount on the room, sight unseen. With our improving Spanish, we managed to bargain it down from 410 pesos to 300 and were very happy when we saw the quality of our room, which was definitely a step up from the room we had paid the same price for in Creel.

Our Room at Los Cumbres

Gerry came back from a walk into town with the news that he had bumped into Sandro and Yvonne and that we were going to eat dinner with them. We drove into town just as the sun was setting and had a light dinner in a small restaurant where surprisingly we met up with two other long-distance cyclists. This pair were Norwegian and were spending an entire year just in Mexico. They were much more intrepid than even Sandro and Yvonne, spending most of their time on backwoods mountain dirt roads with almost no modern facilities or services.

By the time we drove back out of town to our hotel, it was completely dark and with few if any street lights and the beginnings of a rainstorm, we had a rather nerve-wracking few minutes. Fortunately, nothing went amiss and we got home just as the storm broke in full force.