We drove our truck here from Guaymas, taking a back road, cutting the time of the trip. We saw a snake, tarantula and various other critters on our way. We found the recommended Bugambilla hotel but opted out to stay at the Hotel La Choza in El Fuerte, I'm sure it may have had something to do with what I saw on the road. I was also able to leave my truck here, free ;), all week while we took our train ride aka Chepe.
I drove all over town looking for the train station, even stopped to get directions and could not find it. I just decided to give up as we were not going to leave the car there anyway. I figured out that it is cheaper to buy your ticket on the train from the conductor so all I had to do was figure out how to get to the train station. I found out that the 5 peso bus (Estation) stops just outside our hotel so we opted to take that. At least that was the plan. We had no less then 3 taxi's tell us there was no bus. As the time grew closer I was getting a little nervous so I opted to take a taxi at 100 pesos. The taxi drove us to the train station, not one sign along the way. Ten minutes latter the bus dropped off 1 passenger.
We opted to take the First Class train all the way to Creel. The scenery along the way was beautiful and breath taking. I even saw a flock of green parrots flying up a canyon. The train windows were pretty clean and the food and drinks expensive. One of the whistle stops along the way in Divisidero had interesting taco stands. Really good food that we took into the dining car.
When we got to Creel we did not see the recommended Margarita Hostel because there where SO MANY hoteliers in our face. We had one offer us a room for 150 pesos a night and went with him Real Chapultepec Hotel & Tours (Just a home stay place). It was a fine room, but had no heat at all, burrr! We actually ended up buying a blanket. (when we got there the guy left to go buy T.P. and soap) I guess you wouldn't want it sitting around. I did finally see the Margarita Hostel on our walk around Creel, argh, right by the train station... oh well. We had some good meals out in Creel. My new favorite hot breakfast is called Avena with a banana. We met some folks from the UK and Canada on tour. Most of the folks we met were staying in rather swanky hotels. We were on the cheap, that's for sure. We had some really good tours, given by our hotel person. All the tours were very reasonable. They all stopped at the gas station first, seems that all the cars run around with about an 1/8 of a tank of gas.
We rode the cable car (Teleferic) it was really amazing to me, it cost 250 pesos per person, a bit spendy but very unique for the area. The road and the parking lot are a complete disaster then you pop out and bam, here is this brand new high tech gadget. It has only been open for a few weeks, was my understanding. If it was in the USA, it would not be open to the public yet. We enjoyed the view over the canyon. When we got to the other side people went walking all over the place, past all the signs that said they should not. No one seemed to care. Below us we could see small Indian homes, people hanging out laundry etc., with this amazing high tech thing zipping over their heads, seems strange to me. We saw a couple of water falls, interesting rock formations, Indians actually living in caves, really old Jesuit missions and a most unique completely restored collection of Arte Sacro at the Museo Loyola on the Cusarare Indians reservation. The Cusarare women make a beautiful art of woven baskets and textiles.
On the tour to Posada Barrancas/Divisidero we changed hotels, to another Home stay place. Called the Trail Head, we were going to stay at Diaz Cabins but opted for the Trail Head. We had a choice of propane heat or a fireplace in a cute little cabin. PROPANE! all the way, but not at night because it was not vented properly. I got the room so cozy I did a little bit of laundry and hung it up :) There was frost on the ground in the morning. At this place we bumped into a couple of cruisers on SV SULIMA (Polish folks) Kris & Agnes. We had dinner and breakfast with them but they were on a different tour schedule then ours. I hadn't seen any vermin up until this place, actually it was Agnes and Kris who spotted a rat. I'm glad I didn't see it. The place is surrounded by farm animals, it was interesting. I saw a whole cow skin out drying so the guy could make drums out of the hide. We hiked this area a lot. Mostly, we went on a Margarita hike, from one place to another just checking out the margarita's. There are lot's of expensive hotels all up and down the canyon and indians living in caves right off the balcony of the hotel. Again, I found this rather strange. I looked through the hotel binoculars to see a woman cutting wood and hanging laundry.
We caught the train to Bahuichivo and managed to figure out the bus to Urique. It was daylight all the way down the mountain, which was really more amazing scenery and just a little bit terrifying at times. I can get rather ill in a car or bus so I was pretty quick to GRAB the front seat on both buses down to the canyon floor. No one on the bus spoke ANY English, so I really had to muddle through with my Spanish. I had two places recommended to stay in this town and of course ended up at a third one. The first room the guy showed us had a cockroach at the doorway and spiders on the wall, NOPE. NEXT - the next room was fine, except I noticed that one of the beds had tiny, tiny little ants crawling on it. Well I can't have everything so I was just careful not to set anything on the bed. Don't need ants on the boat from our luggage. This town was definitely not on any tourist track. I asked around for a map and ended up at the Municipal building, the guy had a tax map and that was about it. He told us a mine we could hike to but other then that we just walked the streets and alley ways. Of course giving way to the horses and donkeys! The donkeys are mostly wild and just hanging around but I was told they all belong to some one. We saw some folks milking a cow at a small diary and some kids had another quewhatimudi of pet in their yard. There are only a few restaurants in this town. We ate at one that specialized in a shrimp dish. Shrimp? way down here? They said it was really not that far from the ocean by car. They had a huge bucket of shrimp that people where cleaning and everyone that came in for lunch ordered the shrimp dish, so we did as well. It was really good. We met a Chihuahua detective named "Angel", big guy, big smile, big gun! I was glad to be on his good side. He had two beers with his lunch, while in uniform. I asked him what people did for work in this small town, he said they are farmers mostly. The guy at the table made the motion of smoking with his two fingers, ahhh, farmers. I'm a pretty quick student. On our way out of the town today I saw a car, unlocked with the keys in it. I had to laugh cause it was so beat up and probably had NO gas in it, who would steal it. The only gas stations we saw sold gas by the liter, out of liter jugs... No fill her up in that part of the world.
The views of the Canyon were amazing, so green and steep. I loved smelling the wood smoke of the cooking fires and it was amazing to see leaves on the trees, even if they were mixed with catus, yikes. I wouldn't want to slide down a mountain and bump into a cactus! The rivers were interesting, I even saw some fish.
I tried to keep track of our expenses on our "on the cheap" trip to the canyon and later learned that our friends who went on a package deal and stayed in the nice hotels probably paid less then we did. I decided not to add up our expenses, it might be depressing !ah, Chihuahua!
During the daylight hours we saw a Marlin jump out of the water at least 5 times, I guess he was hunting. It was amazing. He was well over 6 feet. We also saw Rays jumping and a huge pod of Dolphin. The only other boat traffic we saw was 8 fishing boats in a line, it was during daylight so we were able to avoid them easily. We had our fishing lines out but did not catch anything. We took 4 hour watches during the night and the evening was pretty uneventful. There was almost a full moon which was nice as we could see all around.
Their home was a very typical Mexican style with the kitchen just inside the front door and a pot of beans on the stove. At some point their son-in-law Oscar, a local chemistry teacher joined us for the feast. We had a lovely meal of crab tostadas and boiled shrimp. We also enjoyed homemade tequila and frozen guava juice.
We opted to take the First Class train all the way to Creel. The scenery along the way was beautiful and breath taking. I even saw a flock of green parrots flying up a canyon. The train windows were pretty clean and the food and drinks expensive. One of the whistle stops along the way in Divisidero had interesting taco stands. Really good food that we took into the dining car.
According to the cruising guide there are several anchorages here but the best is the inner harbor. It suggests you anchor out first, take a dinghy in to check the depth. Unless of course there are already boats in the anchorage then typically someone from another boat will come out in a dinghy and wave you in. As I was reading this low and behold there was a guy in a dinghy waving us in. Wow, just like in the book! Nice. We went right into the inner harbor and stayed in the deep water way away from the two catamarans already anchored. I was up on deck lowering the anchor when a guy off a the other catamaran stormed up onto his deck and yelled at me “F&*~ker” and flipped me off. Wow, I thought that was mean. I asked Doug if he thought we were too close. He said how does he know our dogs name? I said that’s not what he said. I had to get out the binoculars to see the name of the boat, SV Katherine Estelle. I don’t think we were too close if I can’t read the name without the binoculars. Next thing I know the guy has his wife on deck pulling up the anchor by hand and they are moving their boat. I was feeling pretty bad, like I had intruded. He moved the boat to the entrance of the harbor and dropped the anchor. I thought this was odd because now he was sort of in the way and I knew SV Windward Bound was right behind us and would come in. About 20 minutes latter Windward Bound scooted into the anchorage around the catamaran and dropped anchor even closer then we had. Again, the guy was up on deck with his wife pulling up the anchor and moving the boat back near us. Apparently SV Windward Bound was familiar with this particular catamaran and anchored near it cause they knew they would move. A few minutes later the other catamaran “Manta” came on the radio laughing saying “Welcome to San Francisquito, the friendliest anchorage in the Sea!” I think he was just glad to see other boats. We all had a good laugh. The next day SV Marionette and latter SV Rapscallion came into the anchorage and the catamaran Katherine Estelle pulled up their anchor and left the anchorage completely.
We had heard them on the radio on our way over to Santa Rosalia the day before. Trinidad is pretty much just a stopping off anchorage. The wind was howling here and we kept the boat in “Go Mode” all night. We had clean laundry to hand over to them from their stay in San Carlos. Jim was so happy to have his new, very clean, yellow t-shirt back
