Chihuahua and the entrance to the Copper Canyon

Chihuahua, Creel and Urique via the CHEPE


Chihuahua
Reading back through my past couple of writing efforts I am definitely starting to see a theme emerge, vague amounts of touristing, partying and antics in getting from A to B. Therefore I will probably keep this consistency in the following set of notes.


Getting from Chihuahua to Durango is relatively easy one just goes to a bus station and takes a bus which more or less run every hour, unfortunately it takes about 9 hours to get to Chihuahua, so I though an overnight bus would be best thus accommodation and mode of transport would be one in the same. But as per usual rolled off the bus after a crappy nights sleep from not a brilliantly comfortable seating position.

 

Chihuahua could pretty much be summed up as the city of boots and dudes that wear boots. But I also managed to check out the nightlife and have a bit of an alright time too.
Jorge was my CS man for the next couple of days with his bach pad of bachelorness. Some nights it distinctly felt like I was back in Melbourne again when I was trying to get to sleep and my sleeping pad happened to be in the lounge room and I had to wait till one of the cats finished gaming, at like 2.30am. Awesome.

Definitely one of the best moments I had was a discovery of an actual use for churches, apart from celebrating the death of some dude on a stick.

Napping in Churches – Only benefit of Catholics to Mexico.
While it looks to the outsider that you are hard at pray, in actual fact you are getting in your daily siesta / powernap to continue on for the post lunch sightseeing.
You’re not the only one seeking some (sleep) redemption.

Another lesson was learnt on my path of enlightenment and preplanning. Remember to check train timetables before you make a 30min walk with 2 full packs. I made a bit of a late start after a small oversleep thus once packed I had to do a bit of a super sprint to the train station, more like a quick waddle with all my stuff. After a little directional misguidance from my map I arriving at the station just at 6.50am, 10 minutes before the 2nd class train was supposed to leave. Only to be duly informed by the security guard that I had missed the train, turns out only first class runs daily and the second class does not operate on Wednesday’s. Score. Off I trundled back to the bach pad, so I could sleep till 1pm well rested, bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to see actual sights of interest, Las Grutas (some caves on the edge of town) and the museum of Pancho Villa.

After the intensive time that was required to go to those two sites of interest, it was the hour for Jorge and myself to venture out into the great unknown that is finding an open bar on a Wednesday night in Chihuahua, somewhat more of a challenge than one would think. After bar hopping by driving all over town, we eventually settled (it was open) on La Roca, one of the bars we had hit up on my first night in the land of little dog. Nothing really reportable occurred apart from me taking command of the jukebox Jack Sparrow style and the bartender practicing some English with me.

The following day I made my way to the train station and successfully got my train ticket to Creel, also at only 50% of the price due to the kick ass notion of being a student in Mexicoville.


Nug Nug of Info. The CHEPE or the Chihuahua to Pacific Coast train is one of the final operating passenger trains in Mexico


Creel
Where I froze.
While Zacatecas and Real de Catorce were cold, nothing really prepared me to actually see snow again after such a long time, and certainly not while I was in Mexico. On the way to Creel via the train I got as excited as a little girl about to lose her virginity, a little pensive and yet prepared to take it all in. Big reason for pant tightening excitement, ‘cause there was snow on the ground, I was later to learn this snow had fallen some two weeks ago, but at the time I was all sorts of keyed up for frozen water action.

 

It was here that I picked up my travel companion for the next week of Canyon adventure, Murry. He needed a hostel and I had read about one that had free breakfast and dinner. Creel was normally a town most people use to take tours of the Copper Canyon from, being cheap, I just rented a bike for a day and did a 6 hour round trip in 3C weather checking out some rock formations and a horseshoe shaped lack, doesn’t sound too exciting, but I did get some nice pictures and sore legs from all the hills.

Urique
From Creel we headed to Urique. Urique is pretty much at the lowest point of the canyon, with the pueblito having only one main street, that is more or less 100m of concrete and a random assortment of shops, houses and 2 restaurants.
But one of the highlights of Urique would have to be the hostel / hotel we lodged at, Keith Place or Entre Amigos as it was also known. I stayed here for 5 days, not just because it was so cool, because I had to wait for the next second class train to turn up. Reasons it was awesome, hot water for the shower came from a wood stove heat exchanger, huge vegetable garden where all veggies and herbs could be used for cooking, table tennis table and only cost $130 a night.

 

Murry
A character is probably the best description I can give to my unexpected Canadian travel companion for the Copper Canyons. We did the common backpack friends due to being on same transport thing and also possessing backpacks, thus we could then be BFF’s (best friends forever) or something like that. He happened to be travelling in the same direction as me, so he tagged along when I said I was heading to some town in a valley, Urique.
Little nugget of info: Lowest point of the Copper Canyon is the town of Urique located in the Urique Canyon of the Copper Canyons.

His key concerns consisted of more or less four items in the agenda for the day;
1. Procure the herb
2. Consume the herb
3. Nap
4. Play guitar

Somewhere in between these four snacking would occur. But basically most days spent with this ex-mayor of Ymir, BC were a hoot.

Once 1 had occurred then 2-4 would generally be repeated every 3 hours of so. Although one day we did do a bit of an extended hike which took up most of the day going to one of the little pueblitos, Guadalupe.

Guadalupe was basically my only form of hiking I did, it was 3 hours uphill journey to get there then a 2 hours trip back again. It had the mandatory church, 1 room school and a tienda, which was basically a house, but they happened to have some stuff for sale in the front room. Where we could stock up on some lunch of water, biscuits and candy, we also somehow managed to get free oranges out of the deal, I guess we looked that poverty stricken or lacking the nutrition.

 

My final destination after Urique was El Fuerte another 4 hours by train, we arrived in the darkness and there we rested. I stayed until the afternoon as I was heading north and my travel companion south. There Murry stayed on as he had finally found a bar that stayed open later than 12am, one his major gripes he had with Canyon towns, he also managed to wash his clothes, something of a first he said.


The next great adventure, crossing to the Baja.


While not the work of Murry, it is by far my favourite acoustic track.
In Flames - Acoustic Medley

From the colonial to the vaqueros

Zacatecas and Durango

Zacatecas
Getting from Real de Catorce to Zacatecas could be performed one of two ways, the first I would need to backtrack to Matehuala and then again to San Luis Potosí and from there catch a final bus to Zacatecs, that on a map seemed like the longest distance to travel just to get to another town. I decided to take the second option, which I only found out about through the ninja good (read, hopeless) guide book I possess, and the description to get from RdC to Zacatecas only had 2 lines but it seemed like the more interesting option. I boarded the daily Jeep (Wileys Jeep from the 1950’s) to get down from the top of the mountains to the dessert below, 1.5hr of bumping around and we slowly edged our way down the mountain side to the valley below, from there I got another bus by informing the man at the restaurant / ticket office I wanted to go to Zacatecas, he proceeded to indicate that was no possible, but he could sell me a ticket to another destination and from there I could connect onto Zacatecas, fine and dandy me thinks.
Once I reached the next destination it turned out to be somewhat less of another town and more like a restaurant on the corner of the highway where buses occasionally pulled into if you were lucky. Bonza me thinks, hitchhiking it may be. After myself and another traveler, Juan enquired at said restaurant for the availability of buses to Zacatecas we were duly informed that there were no more today. This whole hitchhiking thing, with Alister’s fine white behind becoming a Mexican truck drivers play thing was nearing closer to reality. Juan interestingly enough had just spend 10 days in the desert enjoying the best the desert had to offer while engaging some fairly wild party time and was now on his way home to see his wife and kid.

Back we meander to the side of the road in the hope a bus will rock up sometime so we can flag it down or maybe a vehicle of more repute may venture along the road so that we might be brought towards salvation. Not the salvation a priest thinks he is giving to his alter boys, more the salvation in a walking across the desert one finds an oasis of fine bitches all in need of cock.
Fortunately a bus did turn up after about 40mins of waiting around and it was more or less going in the direction that we needed. Eventually I got to where I needed to be in Zacatecas after taking my bus too far and ending up another suburb, I got the final bus of the night to the centre of town to met up with my CS for the next couple of days, Michael at a Dali themed coffee place for a relaxing coffee after my grand 9 hour adventure to travel about 250km.

The town itself is pretty with the entire centre of town being UNESCO heritage listed, thus no sparkly bling bling signs about. As for the touristing part of my journey, it was a bit lazy to say the least. The only part of the town I really wanted to see was another mask museum that was supposed to be far superior to the crap effort the SLP put forward. First day in town after making the bus ride and 30min walk I discovered the museum was closed. On a Wednesday. What fucking museum closes on a Wednesday ? Sat around in front of the museum for a bit contemplating what else could be done to fill in the time. As much as I love scratching my nuts and smoking, that did not appear to be an option at the current time, a bit too much foot traffic was about. Although the foot traffic did keep me amused as more tourists would rock up, trying to enter only to read the hours of operation sign a bit more carefully and discover, oh it’s closed today.

Later that evening I met up with another local CS’er Claudia and her friends for a couple of beers and some local slang lesson. The first bar was amusing, as it was the lucha themed, the 2nd just being really cool, as it was over 100 years old and full of drunks, students, a dude with an accordion and artwork filling every available corner and space available.

 

Most Important word learnt that evening;

Pistas – Beers

They told me it was just a Zacatecas thing, as I had never heard beer referred in this way, I was later to discover it was more a Northern Mexico thing than anything else from my quizzing of the locals along the way.

After another day of sighseeing, actually getting to see the Mask Museum and not going to the nightclub in a mine I headed on my merry way to Durango, the city most renown for having a shit ton of scorpions and cowboys (vaqueros).

Durango
The little fuckers could be found everywhere, under plastic for a belt, encased in an ashtray and even for a key rack. Supposedly near the market you could see a scorpion farm, as much as I love furry things seeing these little pricks scuttling about was definitely going to increase my paranoia and not my enjoyment of Durango. The other major reason tourists venture out to Durango, apart from the insects, is to see some of the backlot sets where a large majority of Westerns used to be shot, one of the most recent ones being Zorro. Interestingly enough Pirates of the Caribbean was not shot there, but in one of the previous towns I’d been in, Real de Catorce.

 

Thus the only major touristing I did for my weekend in Durango was to get a bus out to one of the sets, Villa de Oeste which had been converted into a sort of theme park Mexican style complete with overacted cowboy’s and indian’s performances and some fine thighs in the form of Kan Kan dancers. The rest of the time was spent getting to know the bars and restaurants of the place with a little help from Anaheim, whose cousin, Serigo I had met the year before in Chiapas while traveling, who also had done IAESTE but to Germany and Austria. Thus I had myself a local connection to the nightlife and daylife of the Duranganese.


Interesting thing learned, while in most small towns and some large suburbs it is traditional for the male drivers to drive their cars up and down the main street, in Melbourne one would call them Chap Laps (referring to laps of Chapel Street, a nightclub and bar district of the South East), as the drivers of the VL Commodores and Skylines show off the shininess of their car, and auditory value of their blow off valves (BOV) and the undeniable penis size to over-compensatory relation they had with their vehicles. In Durango, they did things a little bit differently, the above still existed, but on the street itself, there were no nightclubs with skinny bitches waiting out the front nor clean windows to admire Tony’s new chrome. There were bands set up on more or less every block all generally playing banda of some sort, and the occupants of the cars would stop, enjoy a chevy or 3 and then tip the fine musicians for the job they had been doing. Also strangely enough Sunday nights was the time when all the action happened but again I wrote it off as only in Durango.



Doritos – Dime Vaquero

release your inner monkey

Something I forgot to mention in my last post was an addition of another travel companion to my journey. At Casa Caracol a Spanish couple gave me a travel book, this book had traveled around the from traveler to traveler. This book turned out to be the late Herman Hesse’s masterpiece, Siddhartha (in English fortunately, not the original German). Thus I now have the great responsibility of being keeper of the traveling book, ready to pass on the baton of knowledge after I finish reading the thing.


Getting from Xilitla to San Luis Potosí was not so difficult, there was only one bus transfer at Ciudad Valles and then continues I did on my merry way, very much unaware of the trouble about to befall me once I arrived at said destination.

San Luis Potosí, to some it is known as the city of plaza, to others [read, me] it is known as the city of hotels that don’t seem to be open or when found are ridiculously expensive in relative Mexican terms. So what happened after I arrived from an uneventful bus ride was annoying at the time, but bemusing now whence I write of it. I got a taxi to the only hostel in town, HI affiliate and all that shemozzle, I was very much looking forward using the kitchen to mastermind a hot meal of Cup of Noodle I had secreted in my pack. But no, I was thwarted in my attempt to get a bed at 10pm, the fucking place was closed, I even asked at the little food stand a couple of houses up, they were also surprised it was closed with wild claims of normally having a phone number you can call.

Taxi number 2 to next destination hotel, not so far away and this one also possessed a kitchen, by this time my stomach was yearning for the Cup of Goodness. Fucked over again, this time it was closed for renovations. Off to find taxi number 3, finally get to another Hotel Principal, $170 for the night with can only be described as the worlds dodgiest plumbing, a leaking sink had been repaired Maguiver style with an elastic band and a plastic bag. One of the upsides of this place was that I got cable TV in the shoebox of a room, although the reception was so bad I couldn’t see anything.
By the end of the night I took 3 taxis, went to 3 hotels and still did not get my Cup of Noodles, I had to make do with a torta, as nothing else was open at 11pm on a Friday night.

 

After my sever dicking around on the accommodation, I decided I wasn’t going to stay another night, so I awoke early to run around the centre snapping off shots of the various plazas and my illegal photos inside the Museum of Masks. They were trying to make my pay $20 to use the camera, I was having none of that and just took shots when the guard went to tell of another tourist for non-authorized photos.

Just after the hour of lunch I managed to get a bus on my way to the magical and yet very cold Real de Catorce, well not directly. First I had to get a bus to Matehuala, small town of no reall significance except as a transfer point, then wait 3 hours at the bus station for the final bus of the day to get to Real de Catorce.

While at the bus station I made backpack friends, a couple from Italy who happened to be on the same bus as me from SLP to Matehuala. We made small talk about various travel things, where from, what towns before, and how long. It soon eventuated that one of them had been to Mexico 2x before and both times to RdC. After some questioning as to why the mystical cactus was brought up.
Peyote.
Which is found in the deserts surrounding Real.

Once we all got to the mystical town, I with no plan as usual just headed to the same hotel as they were, hoping a cheapish single room could be procured. Which it fortunately could at Real de los Alamos for the princely sum of $150 night, not bad considering the room was 3 times the size of SLP and with very functional plumbing, ie I had hot water.

 

The next couple of days were spend hiking to the local ghost town, horse rides to see monuments to the sun, drinking a lot of coffee at cafes to utilized free wifi and the heat. And of course sampling the local delicacy of cactus.



As to the experience itself... you’ll just have to wait for the next exciting episode of Alister in Mexico.

antics upon shenanigans = bemusement

Because updating from every town I hit up is somewhat more difficult than people whom roam around Europe and other western nations where they have a mirade of wifi high speed interwebs available to them. I have dodgy internet cafés and the occasional cafe with wifi the every other man and his monkey are kindly raping the bandwidth with youtube videos of the latest banda or reggaton classic.

Anywho, I digress.

In just over a week and a bit I have managed to veer northish hitting up some interesting and some other not so interesting venues. Starting from Queretaro to Xilitla, then onto San Luis Potosí and finally where I am currently banging out this blog entry in Real de Catorce.

 

Queretaro I dids the CS thing because it always makes the travel experience 10x more awesome, which it inevitably did. Surfed with a well chill couple, Australian and Mexican wozza, the spritely lad harking from Dalesford (the homosexual capital of Australia, also home to some nice day spas run by said homosexuals). Dalesford is also about 30mins from my old stomping grounds of the 'rat [Ballarat: referred to as the 'rat by the locals, or a shithole by those who have made the escape].

In the fine colonial town that is Queretaro I was given a ninja good tour by a CS local Rodrigo, who goes up there in the books of things and stuff as probably one of the most knowledge guys I know, in terms of Queretaro. He knew dates of construction, who the architect was and why the Neptune looked like Jesus (bad time management meant a bit of modification had to occur) thus he can walk on water and even control the seas, he's super Jesus. Also got to sample some Rattlesnake Mescal, pretty smooth and made for some hilarious photos.
Next day Ivan (another fellow CS whom I had met December of 2008 at a Posada in Mexico City, way randoms) explored the surrounding countryside doing a bit of budget wine and cheese tour, where we sampled from cheese and wine stores, and bought only one bottle of wine after the entire day. Then kicked it large in the night times with Rodrigo and some peeps, experiencing 2 for 1 drinks for $50 1L beer and late night tacos.


Following day it was time to journey onto the next destination of Xilitla, a freaking amazing destination, that required a bit of a journey over the awesomely beautiful Sierra Gorda. The town itself is not really that interesting, its got an old church, a central plaza, cobblestone streets and youths loitering with intent to loiter infront of said church in aforementioned plaza. The big draw card to the pueblito is Las Pozas, or the mental cement jungle garden waterfall place, as it can also be described. It was designed and made possible by the slightly eccentric English millionaire Edward James in the 1960-70's.
Do some readings on it you lazy fuckers.

 

I spent all of the 31st of December there, exploring as much as I possibly could, I also got lost in the jungle for about 2 hrs following a path that kind of went no-where, and eventually found a lone waterfall, pool and fire-ants. Worth it in my book. Later that evening I moved from the crap hole hotel I had to hole up the first night due to 10.30pm bus arrive to the much more diverse and slightly eccentric (to compliment Las Pozas) Casa Caracol. While at first I thought I was going to enter a hippy comune with crystal toting yoga idiots, it turned out to be a chilled out and mental party place for NYE.
When I eventually slept after, group meal of pizza and salad that we all helped to produce, my contribution to the meal was a nice plastic bottle of Mescal. Drinkings, eating some more, dancing, Ska-P, mental bongo playing from some Chilangas and general chit chattings. I slept in tipi, but with a power point and a light, this was a slightly updated version to the Native North American Indian style. Apart from being such a well designed hostel, it was cheap = 100peso, had wild sculptures and even a zipline.

next stop, San Luis Potosí.

travel music for the mind.