Mexico is a land of colorful contrasts. From golden sand beaches to snow peak volcanoes, from blue lakes to dark green mountains. There are many modern cities and poor little towns; extremely rich people living in lush mansions and Indian tribes barely subsisting in the countryside. Its traditions, music, culture, art and craftmaship have fascinated tourists for centuries. Barrancas del Cobre (Copper Canyon) is a unique area, located in the Tarahumara Mountains of Northwest Mexico. It takes two and a half days from Brownsville, TX, to arrive at the famous canyon, but it is worth the effort.
Alison, our 10-year-old granddaughter, accompanied us. We booked the trip with GO WITH JO, a travel agency from Harlingen. The road passes through very interesting landscapes, starting with the Chihuahua desert, the largest in North America, with approximately 145,000 square miles. For many years this was a typical desert, very dry and almost barren of any kind of vegetation; but in the last couple of years it has received a lot of rain and now you can see big areas covered with recent rain water and heavy brush, such as agave, creosote bush, lechugilla, mesquite, prickly pear, yuccca and sotol. This last plant is used by the natives to produce a light beer. The fauna has also improved dramatically and now you can find, besides snakes and mice, rabbits, frogs, road runners, deer and other animals.
Our first stop was in Chihuahua, where we visited the Government Palace, which occupies a whole block. It has beautiful murals, one of them depicting the firing by squad of father Hidalgo, the founder of the Mexican revolution, an event that happened right there in the city of Chihuahua.
The colobnial cathedral has very intricate stone walls outside. The huge wooden doors show the passage of time and make them unique.
The next morning we boarded El Chepe, the famous train that goes from Chihuahua to El Mochis, near the Pacific coast. This train, labeled "the world's most scenic railroad", is indeed a spectacular ride. This engineering marvel took 90 years and 90 million dollars to complete. It is over 390 miles long and crosses 39 bridges and 86 tunnels. We took it for just half of the length, to the town of Divisadero, our destination.
It was raining heavily when we arrived there and we had to run to our hotel, a charming example of rustic architecture. The entrance door is carved with the figure of a Tarahumara woman. Our room is located in a two-story building, right at the edge of the canyon. We inmediately opened the patio door but were disappointed because we just could see the heavy fog that had developed after the rain.
The area known as the Copper Canyon is actually a series of 20 canyons, formed over the years by six rivers. It is at least seven times the size of Arizona's Gran Canyon!
Right outside the main entrance door of the hotel there is a small Indian market, attended only by women. These Tarahumara women are fantastic basket weavers and their merchandise is very inexpensive. Most of them are working while carrying their babies wrapped in a blanket in their backs. They talk very little and usually don't like to negotiate the prices. I felt ashamed when one of our travel companions complained about this custom. Considering the low price and fact that these poor people need a couple of dollars much more than we do, I never haggled with them about the price.
In the afternoon, the view of the canyon from our appartment was astonishing.
After a delicious breakfast the following morning, we walked about one mile to see a Tarahumara dwelling, which consisted of a cave with a rudimentary stone wall. There was a spring nearby and the water looked pretty dirty. Our guide explained to us that the natives drink it without a problem but if any of us dared to taste it we would probably get sick. There is a great mortality rate among the Tarahumara children. The adults also live a short spam of years and when a husband dies, their house is destroyed and his wife and children have to move to another place. Another curious custom is that after a person dies, he is never referred to by his name, but by a reference, like "the one with brown eyes" or "the one that had a fat belly", etc.
Most of the Indian women and children that we encountered spoke fluent Spanish, besides their own dialect. They are courteous and talk very low, and they don't like to be photographed without their permission, unless you buy something from them.
After lunch, we visited a little Indian town with its own Catholic church. There was another market there and I bought a beautiful face mask made out of different stones. We also bought a delicate basket that was double-walled, so the inside is different from the outside. We also watched a show in open air of some Tarahumara men singing, dancing and playing a guitar and a home-made violin. They also performed a race, running and kicking a wooden ball.
Then we walked a short distance to the most visited spot of the area, the balancing rock. It is a big rock (about six by ten feet) that rocks with your movements when you stand on top . After our guide stepped on it and started to balance it, nobody wanted to climb it, since it is a fall of more than 2,000 feet to the bottom. I had to prove my Cuban macho way -over the objection of my wife- and then Alison said that she wanted to do it also. She did it with the help of our guide, never showing any sign of fear, very proud to be an Alvarez. After that, she was nicknamed "la chiva" (the goat).
Alison was dying to ride a horse and we went with a guide to the highest peak in the area, about 7,800 feet high, from where we could see our hotel below us and the bottom of the canyon way, way down.
It started to rain and we could hear some thunder in the distance. I was afraid that the horses could startle and throw Alison out of her mount, but she proved to be an expert rider, even though it was her first time.
On our return trip we stopped at the little town of Creel, named after the engineer that started the construction of the railroad. We arrived back in Chihuahua in the early afternoon and visited the Museum of Pancho Villa. Born Doroteo Arango Arámbula in San Juan del Río, Durango, in the year 1877, Villa is remembered as both a bandit and a revolutionary hero. He is memorialized with pride along the northern states. The museum is located in the house were he lived with his latest wife. It also exhibits the bullet riddled car where he was riding when he was assassinated on his way to his house in Parral, Coahuila, on July 23, 1923.
We stopped at a rustic Mennonite restaurant where we had the most delicious meal of the whole trip and also made a stop at a cheese factory near the city of Cuauhtemoc, also run by the Mennonites.
After that, we visited Casa Madero Winery in Parra, Coahuila, the oldest winery in the northern hemisphere. Because of this last stop, which was not in the itinerary, we arrived four hours late to our designated hotel, which was probably the most interesting of them all. Rincón del Montero is a hotel that consists of several buildings in about 200 acres of land. Ali and I were looking forward to this place so we could ride horses again, but by the time we arrived there the stables were already closed.
We stopped in Parra again next morning to visit the Nuestra Señora del Madero church, which is located at the top of a hill.
Our next obligatory stop was at Saltillo to buy pan de pulque, a sweet bread that is spiced with pulque, the poor people's Mexican beer.
We arrived at the border under very heavy rain. The streets were flooded and the line of cars to cross the bridge was long and slow. Nevertheless, we were ordered to take all our belongings from the bus and walk under the rain until we entered the building where an Immigration officer asked just a couple of questions and we were then able to board the bus at the other side of the building.
I think that Alison will never forget this adventure as long as she lives and Bruni and I really enjoyed her company and her innocent way of doing things. She made friends with a big dog that was always roaming around along the Divisadero hotel and when we boarded the bus there the dog accompanied her to the last minute. It they had let her, she would have taken him with her.
This was our bonding trip with our beautiful granddaughter.
