We drank a bit less than the Moto Aventuras guys, or maybe we just went to bed earlier. We got up and walked around Creel a bit to find a laundry service. There are some nice places in Creel, but clearly also a lot of poverty. In addition to the dogs that we saw in most towns, we crossed paths on a couple different streets with a poorly-fed horse that was wandering around.
We returned to our hotel and found the guys finally starting to get moving. Eventually all of us (except a few MotoAvs who headed down to Batopilas) took a short ride out to Divisadero. This appeared to be a tiny resort on the rim of the Copper Canyon that featured a neat looking hotel, a train station, a craft market, and a lot of great scenery.
The Hotel Divisadero had a really cool entrance door:
After enjoying the scenery a bit we wandered through the craft market and also got a light lunch there. There was a train full of RV’s parked at the siding. Tony noted “Apparently it’s popular with US RVers to drive down into central Mexico and then hop the train over to the West coast. Having ridden the roads I’m glad all these blue haired old RVers decided to ride the train! This particular train had been sitting in Creel for the two previous evenings allowing the people to spend some time there but had left early in the morning.”
We rode a little further along the canyon rim to the “Piedra Volada” (Flying Rock).
We headed back to Creel to fill up on gas, then Gustavo had a few points of interest for us to visit. First we went to a church that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Gustavo says it is the “San Ignacio mission. The mission dates from the early 1600s, built by the Spaniards to ‘civilize’ the natives.”
A couple of young girls were selling woven bracelets there. I had to buy a couple because I couldn’t imagine they had much opportunity to sell them at this remote location.
There was also a little boy who was very insistently begging for “un peso”. This may have been the most poverty-stricken area that we actually stopped at (we drove by some very primitive places but didn’t stop), and I felt a bit awkward showing up in a group with a bunch of bikes probably worth $100,000 all together. (OK, the two VStroms don’t contribute much to that total!) I’m still not sure if there’s anything I can do to help, but I am going to try to keep this in mind.
Noel had talked to us about one of his pet peeves: CocaCola advertises extensively in Mexico, and Mexicans are, jointly, Coke’s biggest customer. In the Valle de Hongos there was another boy who came over to beg after we parked. He obviously didn’t have a lot, but I did notice when we first arrived that he had a big bottle of Coke. He probably doesn’t have a source of clean drinking water, but he chose to spend what money he has on Coke instead of bottled water.
I’m not sure why I find this as disturbing as I do. Maybe it’s because I have a 2-Dr Peppers-a-day habit :eek1 (For any other Dr. P addicts, let me tell you, there is no Dr. P in Mexico.) But more likely, it’s all part of my frustation with Coke, CitiCorp, and other big corporations using “free trade” agreements … never mind, this is probably not the forum for this.
Then we visited the Valle de los Hongos (Valley of Mushrooms) which had a lot of these unusual rock formations.
On our rock formation tour the next stop was Bisabirachi. The official name in Spanish is Valle de los Monjes, but the native name literally translates into “valley of the erect penises.”
Back in Creel the group tried to have dinner at the Best Western, but despite waiting a long time for tables we never got seated. Eventually we gave up and moved to the restaurant at El Parador de la Montaña. We had a great dinner there and lots of beverages. I had the house special Molcajete. A molcajete is a traditional bowl that is hand carved from volcanic rock. In this case, the rock bowl held a bean and tomato soup with large strips of steak and cheese, plus slices of avocado. It was really delicious.
Jose Lois provided dessert for everyone. He brought stuffed, sun-dried guayaba (guava), a specialty of the Puerto Vallarta area. He gave Tony and I some extras so we could take them home to our sweeties.