(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”.

Valley of the Monks

Valley of the Frogs

Cusarare Falls

We soon caught up to a large fuel truck running in first gear, and going very slowly. We decided to pass, and as soon as we passed the road changed. The grade became very steep, with hairpin turns and the road was scattered with large rocks in many places, sometimes being down to one lane due to rock slides and in one case there was a rock across the entire road which was diverted to one lane on the shoulder and no margin. Derek dropped the truck into first gear, and we slowly wound our way to the bottom of the canyon. The 65 kilometres took us about 2 hours to drive.

At the bottom of the canyon is the town of Batopilas, an interesting town that is one long road with canyon wall on one side and river on the other. The town was at one time an important silver mining town and extremely rich. For years it was the only town in Mexico besides Mexico city to have electricity.

We had read on iOverlander about a fenced in restaurant where others had been able to spend the night. We found the restaurant and were happy to see a beautiful location along the river with citrus trees, a nice patio and little lights strung in the trees, all surrounded by fence topped with razor wire. We asked, and the owner, a saddened older man, indicated that we could stay there for the night not even mentioning a charge. We got set up, put out our chairs to relax for a while before dinner, and noticed that we were parked close to what appeared to be a shrine of some sort.

After dinner, the owner Antonio locked the gates and left for his home. Alone, we decided to investigate the shrine a bit more. Indeed, it was a shrine to a young man who had died on December 31, 2014 at the age of 36. The door and windows of the shrine were infilled with stained glass art. One, a picture of a small aircraft, the other, a scantily clad dancing girl tipping her cowboy hat, another of a Ford F150, and above the door, two machine guns in an upside down V shape. Outside of the shrine were a couple of high end late model luxury SUVs, one black and one white. Both with a fancy wheel and tire packages uncharacteristic of the bottom of the canyon. Given the amount of dust, leaves and bird droppings, obviously they had not been driven for some time and Antonio indicated no concern that they were blocked in. They seemed to have belonged to the deceased. It is known that deep in the canyon there is a lot of drug cartel activity. Were we camped next to the shrine of someone that had been involved with the cartels? Anyone’s guess, but the shrine was beautifully built, filled with flowers and obviously cost quite a bit of money to erect and the establishment was fancy but eerily empty.

Our free camp spot for the night.

“The Shrine”.

The next day, we returned to the top of the canyon retracing our drive from the day before, a bit less stressful going uphill than down. The canyon offered amazing views but few pullouts for photo opportunities. Everywhere you looked you could see trails where the people travel from one small highland village to another, and we saw many people, some in very traditional dress, also walking on the road itself. The canyon is still relatively untouched by tourism, even though by some measures it is larger than the Grand Canyon in the United States. We both agree that the Grand Canyon offers vistas that are hard to beat, but the culture, history and mystery of el Barranco Cobre makes for an exciting destination.