Barranca del Cobre Disaster
I have been thinking about my travels in response to the request for a post about my favourite city. I haven't decided on that one yet, but a particular day springs to mind that doesn't involve cities at all really.
The day began in the middle of the night as I checked out of my hotel at 3:30am to clamber into a pre-booked taxi. My hotel was one of the indulgences of the trip - a night at the Plaza for $100. This was in direct contrast to the previous night with a bed in Guaymas at the Casa de Huéspedes Lupita - $5 for a large room overlooking the prison. Which by the way I recommend.
The taxi driver dropped me off at the deserted and very dark Los Mochis railway station and I felt decidedly alone in the world. I would not get my first mobile phone until a few weeks after I returned home from Mexico ~ in those days we survived quite well without them.
I heard some men shouting in Spanish and followed the sound until I came upon a room that called itself a ticket office. Now I have to admit that despite loving the Spanish languages to death, the appalling fact is that I speak very few words of any type of Spanish at all. Even the words and phrases that I do know somehow become burbled and incomprehensible when I am a lone white woman attempting to communicate with several glinting eyed Mexican men in the dark at 4am.
Somehow I managed to negotiate a ticket on the Copper Canyon Railway to Creel and somehow I managed to decipher which train to get on (there really weren't that many choices - Los Mochis is a far cry from Paddington). In fact during this trip I became adept at watching and learning and copying others when speaking and asking were beyond my capabilities.
I hoisted my ten ton backpack onto the train and found myself a fairly isolated seat. It would only be later on that day that someone would tell me that a white woman travelling alone in Northern Mexico was somewhat of an oddity and not exactly recommended. I had sort of realised this since I hadn't actually met any other solo travelling women - of any colour. So my instinct had honed itself to attempting invisibility and finding the lonely seats. I say lonely, but this was the one time in my life where I was almost completely cut off from everyone and everything I knew. It was ace.
I have never yet figured out whether the train I was on was the tourist Estrella or the budget Mixto except to say that I did not have a reclining seat, I could not bring myself to use the facilities (and I'm a festival going type) and neither train timetable bore any relation to the actual journey. But Mexico teaches you about living in the moment rather than attention to the details more than any other place I have travelled.
The railway journey is spectacular both from a scenery point of view and from a who-on-earth-decided-to-construct-a-railway-line-like-this?! point of view. It zig-zags back and forth up into the Sierra Madre with sometimes only three inches of loose dust between the edge of the track and the vertical drop of a few thousand feet.
When you are aware that these trains are delayed or cancelled regularly because of derailment and landslides, those bits of track really are edge of the seat moments.
I understand the trip is better broken up into a few days, but I travelled from Los Mochis to Creel all in one day. The only time I was off the train was for the photo stop at the actual Barranca del Cobre - the Copper Canyon.
I have to say that this canyon is stunning and I have to say that I was almost unable to pay it any attention. Because approximately 30 minutes prior to our arrival at the Copper Canyon I became aware of 3 things - I had somewhere forgotten to repack my supply of feminine hygiene products, there was nothing resembling loo roll anywhere on the train and my moon time was 1 week early.
That is why I stood at the edge of the Copper Canyon wearing my long, green and very thick fleece (I can assure you that it was not fleece weather). That is why my legs were sort of crossed and my back sort of hunching and that is why I tried to walk back to the train with my back against the wall.
That is also why the universe chose that moment to produce the most beautiful young bilingual man and stand him next to me. I had not heard English words for two weeks. I had never seen such a beautiful man at such close range. I had never been chatted up by such a gorgeous being, who clearly thought the same thing about me, ever.
And I was in the middle of menstrual crisis.
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Tags: barranca del cobre, copper canyon railway, memories, menstruation, mexico, sod's law, travel
more? is there more? to be continued? how can you stop right there??????
What a story! And what a disaster! – fascinating!
There is more… although sadly not with Gorgeous From Guadalajara… let me rake over the memories and see what comes up…