Mexico Trip 2: Copper Canyon and Baja California
Traveling to Copper Canyon
Photos from our trip getting to Copper Canyon:
Getting Started
Loading the 3 bikes into the truck and trailer at David's house...
...and arriving at Dave and Linda's casita in Yuma a day and a half later
Wayne, Richard, and David ready to leave for the short ride
to our night in Arizona before crossing the border.
Day 1
After a very friendly, but nonetheless lengthy and complicated border crossing, we rode through the desert along the US border.
Much of the first leg was in sight of the US/Mexico fence.
Our very tasty lunch stop in Sonoyta.
Some of the desert scenery headed to Caborca was very pretty.
Day 2
We breakfasted in Caborca at a place that Richard and David had eaten at on the last trip and remembered liking.
Eventually we headed east into the mountains, where the desert and mountain views were lovely.
We had a good lunch in a remote town named Cucurpe.
The road became very bad, but the scenery got even better (the mountains, not the people).
We finally arrived at out destination in Banamichi, a beautiful hotel built and run by ex-pat Colorado motorcyclists.
The courtyard of the hotel is full of bougainvillea and scented with star jasmine.
David and Tom, the owner, chatting in the courtyard.
Day 3
Our trip from Banamichi passed through small picturesque towns.
The first part of the day's ride led through the high desert.
Our lunch stop in Pueblo de Alamos. Our hosts were extremely accomodating, bringing us a bowl of delicious nopal (cactus) soup to start.
The road continued through a landscape full of organ pipe cactus.
However, our road luck ran out with 15 miles of bad dirt road that put us behind and caused us to ride to Yecora in the dark.
Day 4
We started our day by working on both Wayne's and Richard's bikes.
The road to Basaseachic Falls was wet from an earlier rain.
It ran through a landscape of beautiful rock formations.
A family shrine built into the rocks. A painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe is painted on the rock above.
The rocks were spectacular, reminding us of Zion National Park.
We stopped for lunch in the town of Basaseachic. It had started raining in earnest, and we were donning rain gear.
The rain slowed us down, and the park gate was closed by the time we arrived. However, we hiked to the lookout point to see Basaseachic Falls anyway. It was late, cold, dark, and wet when we reached San Juanito, so we spent the night there.
Day 5
We had a short 25 mile ride to Creel, which we had hoped to reach the previous day.
Creel is in the area of the Tarahumara (Raramuri) people, who retain much of their traditional lifestyle and dress.
We found a great place to stay for a couple of nights. They even let us park the bikes under the awning on the left.
An appropriate tour agency in Creel. (Later we met the owner, Ivan, who is a real character, but that is another story.)
Day 6
We went out in the moring to find that the Chihuahua Express car rally was happening in Creel that day. Here is a late 50's Studebaker Hawk rally car.
We decided to go to the Recohuata hot springs for the afternoon, only to find the route roadblocked. It turned out that the rally had taken over the road. We were told that the road would be opened in half an hour, so we decided to wait.
Time went by, and the traffic into the roundabout backed up in every direction.
Richard decided to catch a few Zs in the center of the roundabout while we waited.
Eventually the cars, such as this Hudson Hornet from about 1953, started trickling in slowly. However, after waiting an hour and a half we decided it was too late to go to the hot springs, and went back into town for a quiet evening.
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