VISIT WITH ME - MEXICO!! BARRANCA DEL COBRE, TARAHUMARA PEOPLE etc.

JOURNEY TO BARRANCA DEL COBRE / COPPER CANYON _ NORTHWEST MEXICO. 

 

On our trip on the motorcycle from Los Angeles, through Arizona to Mexico, we stopped for a longer trip without a motorcycle at the Pacific coast to visit the famous, beautiful canyons called under one name: Barranca Del Cobre - Copper Canyon. No compare it with others canyon! This one is it in awe and wonder to the dramatic Barranca del Cobre (Copper Canyon.) 
It’s a series of more than 20 spectacular 

canyons that altogether comprise a region that’s four times larger than the Grand Canyon in Arizona and in several 
parts much deeper. 

We left the motorcycle in Los Mochis, in the hotel, to travel right up, over and through 

some of the steepest areas on the Ferrocarril Chihuahua Pacifico, called CHEPE, the train 

with diesel. The whole time is was an awful smell. I was toxicated after the 10-hours ride. This train exists since about 1971. Many people travel here. The ride isn´t cheap. There are days for first -class train and for second-class-train. We went with both. The first class was a bit faster. The whole ride costs about 600-1000 pesos to Creel from Los Mochis.

 

The train took us- passengers - on amazing senic journey  over 650 km of impressively laid 

trails. I even didn´t notice the time!! We could look out from the open 
door as you see us happily seeing each others. 

We couldn´t believe that we are going to see such a beautiful landscape. 
I have never seen such before. 
This was my first step into the subtropical climate with such a scenery. 
I absolute continue to step further!!
 I spent almost all the time looking out from the open door. It was so sunny, warm day!! Not hot, a particularly good time to come is late September and October (after the summer rains), when the vegetation is still green. Things dry up from February to June, but you can still glimpse some wildflowers. The train pass the cliffs, bridges over the rivers, many tunels, just very onetrack-piece of Earth, what a breathtaking ride!! 

When we were driving on taxi in Los Mochis, a taxi driver told us a story about this train, at one station came in the train men on the horses inside of the train and robbed all the passangers. One man from the Switzerland filmed all this shocking incident, one of the bandits took him the camera and shooted him. Since then is a police in the train.

One of the tunels....trough the mountains.

I just spent 10 hours watching outside... it would be a shame to sit in the train... the look outside of the train was a vivid natural scenario!! 

We arrived to CREEL. A small village surprises with a atmosphere like a last DORADO of the WILD WESTERN where the most tourist stop on the way to Chihuahua. It is very easy to find a hotel. We didn´t check it before, there are some inhabitants waiting for the coming tourists. Also many inhabitans, the native Americans were trying to sell us apples, tacos etc. 

Our driver and guide in one let us ride on top of the canyons!! I was absolute breathless...

 Switchbacks down to roads and a death-defying dirt track into the awe-inspiring canyons, tracing the river to the semi-tropics below.

This is already in Barranca del Cobre!!
Stones and dry Earth. 

 

With our guide behind us is a famous waterfall... I forgot the name...

The bridges are there very important... they are over 20 canyons... small and big!!

Tarahumara people belong to the countryside... they are like colourful flowers in this dry, stony landscape!! Enjoy their sence for the colors!

 

.. 

This is the place we were San Ignacio. It was just a day of a celebration... what the procession with the many many riders, los cavallos... how fascinating! But somehow I was afraid... if something happens... so many horses...!  I am sorry, I can´t tell you detailes about this procession, I forgot all, just the impression of the horses, riders and praying people for the peace I kept in my mind. Here they are. 

 

 Incredible... los cavallos... coming to the the procession!! 

   

This is mother and daugther I walked the whole procession with... we spent a nice time together!! The daughter was so sweet and cute...!! 

 

This is another part of the canyon! Deep and wide landscape!! 

Huge and beautiful!

Here is the lift-train... which brings you over one canyon... una barranca with a modern technology, they must be proud of it, it is about 200 pesos a ride!! 

Another guide! 

All under me... I am like an angel to fly just further and high!! I feel it.... :-)

Can you see me??

OMG, this was really a great cliff!!

Me excersing karate over one of the canyons... I did 5 years! What a cool feeling...

We were a great group of hispanic people... and me, Czech one!! Blonde one...

We had fun! Drama.. and worries... 

 Look at the map and check out... where was this beautiful place I was talking about.... 
Like the Musician from Bremen/Germany... here the Musicians from Creel!! 
 

Look at the other posts here in Blog about Mexico!! Hecho En Mexico!! 

VISIT WITH ME MEXICO!! JOURNEY TO THE ABORIGINES: TARAHUMARA PEOPLE

VISIT WITH ME now... : TARAHUMARA PEOPLE.  in BARRANCA DEL COBRE / COPPER CANYON in NORTWEST MEXICO - SIERRA MADRE OCCIDENTAL. 

It is wrong to call them the Rarámuri, this is a word that gave the scientists to the TARAHUMARA people, told me a guide in Creel, the city where we stopped to visit the Tarahumara people. 

I am interested in the life of the Tarahumara people, after I really appreciate their somehow stubborn way of life. They are not so easy to be manipulated. 

They live in and above the canyons of northern Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental, where we were heading on the train, they retreated five centuries ago from invading Spaniards. 

How is the realtionship between the Tarahumara and the rest of 21st-century Mexico? Tarahumara men work on the farms, I have never seen while traveling there in the canyons and mountains a single man working outside, the women are more in the function to be seen and to be in public. The Tarahumara are reticent and private people who live long distances from each other, in small adobe or wood houses, or caves, or homes partway under outcroppings so that the rock itself provides the roofing. They brew an alcoholic beverage from corn, which they grow in small fields they plow by hand, and on celebratory occasions they gather to pass the drink from person to person, taking swigs from a hollowed half gourd, until they become voluble or dreamy or belligerent and lie down on the ground to sleep it off. I saw few of them just sleeping at the streets, or in the church drunk. Women with their children are going to be dependat on the Mexican who bring them the work, and the tourists. 

And how I heard /there is also some movie about their special skill/ they are extraordinary endurance runners, having lived for generations amid a transportation network of narrow footpaths through the canyons; Rarámuri means "foot-runner" or "he who walks well," and they've been known to irritate American ultramarathoners by beating them while wearing huarache sandals and stopping now and then for a smoke. 

On our trip we went on the train, called Chepe - I wrote about this in the last post - from Los Mochis, at the Pacific Coast to Creel (near is Chihuahua, the final station of the train). 

Creel is a small village, it is one of the gates for tourists wh travel by train to discover the life of this native Americans. Aborigines.   This was a day of a full moon. Beautiful! 
The view from the train.... 

  

Along the train stations on the way to Creel.

They are 60,000 strong in the Sierras, one of the most isolated and independent tribes in Mexico. I like them, their spirist is deployed by aesthetics and spiritual life. 

Children run around the turists and offer humble the products and want some dolar. If you give, and I often gave, there was no thank you for the proffered coin, even if I asked: what do yous say? There was a silence.

 I thought, that this is a part of their proud, which is very strong. I admire this.   

Thanks to the guide we could see how they live... well, it was strange to enter their house! Even if it is open for "everybody" as you can see the cave isn´t any labyrint... but I was feeling that I am not welcome, even they were humble, shy sitting on the ground and watching quietly. As everywhere we were temepted to buy some of their handmade products also here there were ready to offer us some products... so we bought a lot.  

I suppose that the guide does it with a purpose to bring us here, he is also Tarahumara origin, but one who wanted education, who is just one of the socialized and already modern people, there are such ones... 

 This man allowed me a bit... to take a picture... he had a very warm, so far I think here is the winter not so bad, the wood is a very healthy and firm isolation. He told me: in the winter is very warm inside. 

The bedroom-part of the house where Tarahumara people live.

Here you can see the landscape and the wooden houses, they live in.  

The winter is quite sever. I am wondering how they survive in the open cave?! 

And here we entered thanks to the guide the cave... I was feeling strange....

 They cook and maybe also wash themselves here... this was very surprising corner of the cave.

 The aim of the socialized Tarahumara people is the learn the aborigin to deal well with the rubbish, not to leave it in the nature. They collect it at home.

 The bed and sleeping space. I was very sorry to disturb them like a tourist...

But it was a rare moment... to feel it.

Here they selll their beautiful hand-made products, you must buy it... for all your friends, you can have a gift from the trip... and this is a special trip!!

 

These Tarahumaras wait at the streets, in the nature.... everywhere where they expect the tourists. Well, there aren´t still so many tourists. I met 3 Americans during our trip. So far, still very pure to be there and share the day with them...

This are the products, handmade... they produce it there, while waiting... from the gras, wool, they use the natural material!! It is so nice, lovely... I bought there many things!! It is cheap and you help them to survive, to live their own life not to accomodate to ours. 

This little girl had a book in a hand!! She was reading or maybe just watching the pictures...

I love that girl...she was so pretty with her brother... see their MULTIcolorful clothes ...so beautiful.

They go in the church, they are christianized by the Spanish conquerors. But they have own rituals. 

By the most recent government count, 106,000 Tarahumara live in Mexico, making them one of the largest indigenous groups in North America; the majority still live in relative isolation in the area Mexico promotes as Copper Canyon, but both the place-name and the image of its inhabitants sketched by tourist outfits ("They live a simple life undisturbed by modern technologies," reads one online write-up) turn out to be fragments, understatements, misleading in the neatness of their packaging.

Creel, the former logging center whose present-day economy depends on the scenic railway line that runs through town. Government planners envision a subsequent hotel boom to accommodate eventual jetloads of new tourists. Officials in Chihuahua, the Mexican state encompassing most of the Tarahumara territory, are courting private investors for a proposed canyon-rim complex—bungee jumps, a chasm-spanning gondola, more hotels, and an "Indian village" for the permanent display of "rituals, ceremonies, and clothes"—to be built farther west on the railway route, along what's now a tourist overlook crowded with Tarahumara vendors. The vendors are nearly all women and children, offering the baskets and weavings they have learned tourists like. Girls not yet old enough for school, or old enough but nonetheless spending their days hawking souvenirs, hold up fistfuls of braided bracelets while repeating the first Spanish they ever learned: "¿Compra?—Want to buy?" 

 And the nature in the forests... they live...

  

See here in another post more about our trip in Mexico, it is worth to discover....