Monthly Archives: November 2017

Beach time

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We drove south from Mazatlan to an ocean front campground near the town of Teacapan called Color Marino RV Park.  We took the libre (free) road, instead of the toll road, travelling through several small towns.  Peoples’ reaction to us varied from enthusiastic smiles and waves, to slight frowns (damn tourists!), to indifference.  Many of the small towns we drove through looked very poor, and we later learned that many farms in the area were badly damaged by hurricanes and have not recovered.

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Tunnels, bridges and a burned out truck.

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We had two options for driving from Durango to Mazatlan.  The first was the old highway, part of which is known as La Espina del Diablo (the Devil’s Backbone), described as a treacherous road that snakes through mountains known for their marijuana fields and opium production, and which would take about 7 hours, if all went well.  The second, a fairly new highway, costing about 35 CAD in tolls, with 115 bridges and 61 tunnels and a driving time of about 3 hours.  We love adventure, but treacherous, not so much, so we opted for the toll highway.

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Museo of Pancho Villa

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(Nov 18, 2017)

We set our afternoon’s destination as the Museo (Museum) of Pancho Villa in the small town of Canutillo, south of the city of Parral. We had read that you could camp for free without any hassles in the parking lot, and we were interested in visiting the museum as well. Quite a timely activity, as November 20th is an important holiday in Mexico, celebrating the start of the revolution in Mexico against the widely perceived corrupt government lead by Porfirio Diaz. Pancho Villa was a key figure in the revolution.

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Driving into Batopilas: Steep, winding and debris ridden!

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(Nov 17 – Nov 18, 2017)

After leaving Creel, we camped for a night at Lake Arareko, visited interesting rock formations, and hiked into a nice waterfall, then made our way to the town of Batopilas in the bottom of the Copper Canyon. We had been told that the road was paved, but was steep, and scattered with rock and debris. The first part of the 65 kilometre drive seemed pretty relaxed, we saw a few rocks and thought “Hey, this isn’t so bad”.

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Rough roads and being the talk of the town

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We wanted to make our way towards the Barranco del Cobre (Copper Canyon) and we knew we wanted to spend a night at Basaseachic Falls along the way, but we were pretty sure we could not make it there in one day.  We looked at our map and decided on a route that would take us on some lesser travelled road.  We had some concern that the one road might be not much more than a track, but decided we would assess it when we got there and if it looked bad we would take a detour that would add a few kilometres to the day but allow us to travel on better roads.  We didn’t know where we would camp that night, but hoped we might find a nice place to park along a river.

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Ruta de Rio Sonora and beef ribs by the river

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The lesser known Ruta de Rio Sonora is a tourist route along a road built in the 1970’s to connect colonial towns along the Rio Sonora.  Most of the towns were established in the 1600’s, the earliest we saw was in the late 1500’s, and before the road was built people would travel on the river bed and banks to get from one town to the other.  The area is rich in history, with old mission churches and ranch lands that have been in the works for centuries.  The Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (unfortunate name…Cabeza de Vaca means cow head) followed the Rio Sonora in the 1500’s, as did the Coronado expeditions of 1540.

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Hola from Mexico, we made it!

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We left Sunnyvale near San Francisco and made our way into Arizona, heading for the border crossing at Nogales (south of Tucson).  Before leaving California we spent another night in a casino parking lot just west of Palm Springs.  We woke up at 3 in the morning to the sound of helicopters flying overhead.  In the morning we discovered that there were several police cars, authorities armed with HUGE rifles, ambulances and other emergency equipment blocking off part of the casino….what the ….. ??????  Okay, looks like some action happening, but can we still use the rest room????

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