Ride to Batopilas

Creel is the starting point for our trip. The bronze figure above shows an Indian Dancer in ritual dress in the middle of the main road out of town. The Taramaru Indians are known for long distance running in the mountains of their native territory. Dance has also been part of their culture for a very long time. This bronze statue portrays the ritual Indian Dancer of the Taramaru tribe.

Copper Canyon is really a set of canyons and we are going through three, each with a name – Copper, La Bufa and Batopilas. We started out at 8:30 with Oscar, the driver of out 4×4, Carlos, our guide and Beatrice, Chuck and me after breakfast. The back was loaded with luggage and provisions from the hotel for our lunch. The firs top and walks was to a waterfall called a cascada in Spanish.

The ride took almost all day with a stop at the waterfall. The road was almost empty, we counted 7 cars in 4 hours going in the opposite direction and came to one rather overloaded truck going very slowly in our direction in the middle of the road. The waterfall was not very vigorous but it was easy toimagine it blasting down after a rain.

Scale is difficult to assess, you have to look across to the fence on the other side to see hoe really big it is. The whole path from our car to this spot had stalls many empty, but some with then Tarahumara Indians women selling trinkets and some straw busters and beaded jewelry. Others had woven belts and aprons. The park is part of Mexican land grant system which granted land to the Indian families after the 1921 Revolution. The land cannot be sold but remains as a land grant to the families and their community. They run the park.

About We stopped for lunch at an overlook after taking a right turn on what appeared to be a brand new road, The last part was finished two years ago and that was at the junction, it was the best part of the road.

This was taken from the overlook the white above the river is the same road after 7 switch backs that are dangerously marred by fallen road, sometime not allowing either lanes to pass. On the way back (we must use the same road to leave this canyon) I want to take a photo of the largest rock fall. The landscape is superb and wild. We left the pines many miles ago. While we ate lunch looking across the road we saw goats up on a hill perched here and there to eat we watched and one poor dear fell down the opposite side of the craggy spot, we all hoped he landed well…