Day 2+3 –Creel-Batopilas-Hidalgo de Parral

Day 2+3 –Creel-Batopilas-Hidalgo de Parral

It was a chilly morning on Nov 20^th, 2010 as we departed Creel on our way to Batopilas, a secluded community of 1000 people in the heart and very bottom of copper canyon. Brett thought it would be funny to write "crash me" on my frosted tank case, (joke would be on him later on)

Before that Brett and I decided to take a tour around Creel through some cool stuff. First was the valley of mushrooms and toads, I know sounds like something referring to a drug trip of some sort. It was amazing to see the display of giant rocks and people living around them.

We then headed out to a cave dwelling where the Taramarhua Indians lived. As my continued travels along the mountains and hundreds of indios, I kept seeing little children. It made me realize how small the world seems to these little kids, they live every day of their lives in this area without leaving, and there livelihood is selling souvenirs to tourists. It made me re-evaluates my life and all I’ve done and put it into perspective. I felt a strange feeling of remorse for the children for not knowing the true world that was out there, but in fact I envied them. They live in this beautiful valley, secluded from everything and their biggest worry or notion in life is getting the occasional peso or money. Many of us stress over life and everything about it to the point to self mutilation or sickness, while when I looked into the eyes of this little girl, I realized that she was happy as can be, oblivious to the violent world around her.

As we continued we saw the most popular part of the canyon, where we took some really cool pictures.

Later that afternoon we were confronted with the infamous Creel to Batopilas route that provided 40 miles of off roading that took 3 hours to accomplish. This route literally took us from the top of the canyon, all the way down the bottom and traversed 3 or 4 separate giant canyons, all through sand, rock gravel and absolutely no pavement to reach Batopilas.

Me taking a moment to dust off and feel the breeze inbetween my legs

As I mentioned earlier, Brett was funny enough to write crash me on my pelican case, luck would have it, guess who the one who wiped out was…yes it was Brett.

Here's video of Brett's crash

He was alright after a bump to the head, could have been worse as he was only feet away from tumbling into copper canyon and never to be seen again.

Besides the small mishap, I must say this was probably on my top 2 roads ever driven in life, next to Utah and Monument Valley, absolutely gorgeous!

After much dust inhaled, we reached Batopilas where we were greeted by the locals looking at the crazy motorcycle dudes. I negotiated a $30 room that unknowingly had serious bed bugs. To make a long story short, by morning Brett’s white sheets and mine were splattered with dead insect’s blood that made it look as somebody had been stabbed on our beds.

Apart from the bugs we were treated to a celebration of the 100 anniversary of the Mexican revolution and the 200 anniversary of independence. We watched the entire town of 1000 people and the surrounding villages come out to watch kids from the local school perform dances and celebrate.

The next day after our killing spree we got up, Brett fixed up his basked bike, said bye to the locals and were on our way. 

On our way to Hidalgo de Parrall we passed a military check point. As Brett played the “I’m a gringo tourist card” I spoke to the military. Well as my last post stated, I’m carrying a knife and pepper spray for my protection. As I was being search I was almost caught again, but quick thinking enacted me to start a conversation with the guys and by the end of it we were talking about how much the bike cost and how cool looking it was. Lucky moment # 3, viva Mexico!

As we arrived in Hidalgo, we checked into a hotel. I got the room, went to the grocery store, and bought some food for Brett and I at a local torta stand. Later my surprise I come to find out that the hotel we were staying at was hit up for protection money, aka bribe 2 days before, the store in front of the hotel the same thing (they even broke a window), and the food stand and convinced store I had just been to were held up at gun point and robbed along with everybody inside at the time, just a few days ago.

Well, as uncomfortable as this may seem, I thought, ok, this is not such a bad thing. We all know things in Mexico are bad, but the burglars usually don’t hit the same place twice in the same week, so I think I should be ok for tonight, but we shall see, pepper spray and knife are sleeping under the pillow tonight.

Tomorrow we head off to Mexico City was fast as we can full the throttle. Until then, wish us luck.