The middle two weeks of August are the summer holidays in Mexico. To begin with, Mum and Dad came over and had a tour of Colima state and the volcano. Then Gemm and I headed north to Chuihuahua, home of small dogs and poorly-translated souvenirs to explore the mountains. Here are some photos.
For some reason, the 17-hour bus ride seemed to go by quite quickly.Copper Canyon
The Barranca del Cobre railway is supposedly one of the most spectacular train rides in the world. It takes 14 hours to get from Chihuahua (at 2400m) down to Los Mochis (at sealevel and 700 km away). We did the ride in two stages, spending a lot of time in the town of Creel, which has lots of touristy ways to see a bit more of the area.
A small boy takes a liking to Gemma's camping mat.
Bouldering in the Valle de los Hongos (Valley of the Mushrooms), near Creel.Basaseachi
About 3 hours from Creel, Basaseachi is a remote mountain town famous for its waterfalls. We spent 5 days camping and climbing and generally chilling.
La Cascada de Basaseachi is 250 m tall.
Clipping bolts in the sun.
Click on the panorama to enjoy the view from the top of 'La Buena Vista'.El Gigante
We paid the ranch owner to lend us some horses and to guide us to El Gigante, the biggest rockface in Mexico, and La Piedra Volada, the biggest waterfall (if only during July to September when the rains are here). It was amazing.
El Gigante is 885 m tall. Don Fernando, the ranch owner told us that he had partly funded the first ascent. It took three weeks camping at the bottom for the route to be found, and the climb itself involves a couple of overnight stays on ledges/hanging from the wall. It is hard and dangerous (with multiple pitches of hooking A4 or A4+). I was scared just looking at it.We were quite surprised when we ended up actually at the top of La Piedra Volada; we expected that we were going to see it from afar. The water running off the bottom of the picture falls 450m before it reaches the ground. You can try and look over but you can't see the bottom.
Exploring the canyon
A missed bus from Basaseachi meant hitching out. Fortunately we were at a military checkpoint and people seem very keen to offer a ride when asked by a man with an automatic weapon. Back in Creel we hired a scooter and cruised the winding roads of the canyon.
The Caped Crusader surveys the lie of the land. Click to see it bigger.
It's not big, it's not clever, and it flooded the engine of the bike.To the coast
The train ride down the coast was fairly scenic as promised and featured such engineering marvels as spiralling tunnels that spit you out of the valley wall facing an entirely different direction to the one that you went in at.
El Divisadero: it's deeper than the Grand Canyon down there.Durango
On the way back we stopped off at Durango, which is famous as a scenic location to film westerns. John Wayne swaggered down the dusty streets of Villa Del Oueste in his day.
We put in a decent amount of swaggering ourselves...
Tidying up for home
My time in Mexico is running out fast now and it is starting to sink in that I am coming home in just 4 weekends time. The more that I see of the country the more that I love it. I'm going to miss it a lot.
