That afternoon we headed to the capital, Mexico City, one of the biggest cities in the world. We got off the bus and got on the Mexico Metro, a huge subway system that services the entire city, and crammed onto the trains with all our packs. It only costs 2 pesos, about 20 cents, for a ticket to anywhere in the city. We got out at the Zócalo, the main plaza, and it was shocking emerging into the middle of one of the biggest plazas in the world. We found a cheap hostel right near the zócalo and explored the historical centre containing the National Cathedral and the Atzec ruins of the city of Tenochtitlan whose main plaza was in the same location as the current zócalo. The next day we went with some other people from the hostel into the huge Mexican government building on the zócalo which was full of immaculately maintained gardens and sculptures. On the second floor were a number of huge murals by the famous mexican painter, Diego Rivera. When we went to exit the building nobody
would let us and we were slightly confused. Eventually a guard escorted us out and we noticed a whole bunch of police around the zócalo. About ten more vans full of police drove up and then 5 to 10 buses pulled up and a whole bunch of protesting miners poured out. They marched up to the government building and started chanting. They handed pamphlets out which showed their demands that the government recover buried miner's bodies and end the miner strikes. After we took the metro to the huge Chapultepec Park, home to a number of interesting museums. We went to the Mexican Zoo, which was free, and saw a bunch of cool animals such as panda bears, giraffes and my first jaguar in Latin America. We returned to the zócalo just in time for another protest, this one by the Zapatistas. They were draping signs on the government building demanding that the army leave Chiapas and the police came through in full riot gear and pushed the protesters away from the building. It was a tense situation but things didn't escalate.
The next day another group of us from the hostel returned to the park with the museums and went to the huge Archeology Museum. It is full of amazing artifacts from across Mexico including from the Mayan, Aztec and many other cultures. It is impossible to see the entire thing in one day but I was still amazed by some of the tombs of kings and stones statues. After we walked up one of the main streets in the city through the business section and saw the highest building in Latin America and a number of impressive statues, including the signature Angel of Independence. We then took the subway to Tlatelolco square. This used to be the second of the Aztec's twin cities and there are a number of ancient Aztec ruins here as well as a church that dates back to the time of Cortéz. But nowadays it is more well known as the site of one of Mexico's more recent massacres. In 1968 the Mexican government was trying to put on a good face for the '68 Olympics and were cracking down on protests. At Tlatelolco square the police started firing into the crowd and many people were killed. The news was supressed by the entire media and to this day nobody really knows why the police started firing or how many were killed but most people think it was 200-400 people.
The next day I had come down with Montezuma's Revenge, or in other words, diarrhea. It was the first time I got it since my travels began but I would have preferred to avoid it altogether. I spent the day just hanging around the hostel. Luckily there was a huge rock concert being held in the zócalo so I watched that for a while. There was also a huge protest where thousands and thousands of people marched miles long through the streets around the zócalo. It appears that there is never a quiet moment in the center of Mexico. Later in the evening I felt a bit better and went to the Lucha Libra. This is Mexican wrestling made famous by the movie Nacho Libre, where all the wrestlers have colorful masks and are highly acrobatic. It was a big night for the wrestling and the stadium was packed with fans. When everyone started chanting for a wrestler, you knew they were popular and when they booed they were unpopular. The show ended with a cage being set up and 10 wrestlers locked inside until all had climbed out but one. The entire show was entertaining and obviously extremely popular in Mexico.
The next morning we left Mexico City. I could have spent many weeks there and not have gotten bored because there was so much to see and do. It was much cleaner than I expected and I can definitely see myself returning again. The next city we headed to was Guanajuato, about 4 hours northwest of Mexico City. This was an old mining town and, even though it is now the capital of the state, the town still feels that way. The buildings go right up the side of the mountains and the streets are very crooked and narrow. The town is riddled with tunnels under and through the mountains were most of the vehicular traffic passes through. These arching tunnels look like they used to be mine shafts dug out of the stone. Above the tunnels, the city is full of gorgeous colonial buildings and the houses on the mountain sides are painted every colour of the rainbow. In the morning I was exploring the city and bumped into a parade going through the streets. There was bands playing and many different types of dancers including Aztec dancers, machete dancers and people with huge paper mache masks. After the parade I went to the Don Quixote museum. The town is famous for its annual Don Quixote festival and has statues of Don Quixote, Sancho Panchez and Miguel Cervantes. The museum holds a large collection of Don Quixote themed art from around the world including art from Dali and Ocampo. I also climbed one side of the city, through the twisting streets, to a huge statue which gave a great view of the city.
We continued west, passing by a huge statue of Christ on top of a mountain marking the geographical center of Mexico, and arrived at the city of Guadalajara. With four million people it is the second biggest city in Mexico. The cathedral in the zocalo was very impressive, with an interesting mix of neo-classical and gothic architecture. The government building was also interesting with a huge, very dark and disturbing mural that recounted the history of Mexico and another mural on the ceiling of the government congress. The next day we headed north along the Pacific Coast, first passing through the blue-green fields of agave in the town of Tequila, and finally arriving in Mazatlan, a beach town. We only spent a few hours in Mazatlan but saw the endless beaches and the numerous resorts. It was extremely popular resort for Americans in the 80's but now there are mostly Mexican tourists.
After Mazatlan we took a night bus to Los Mochis and immediately got on the morning CHEPE train. This train travels through the Copper Canyon and it's the only access to some parts of the canyon. The Copper Canyon is actually a group of different canyons formed by different rivers and in many places it rivals the Grand Canyon in size. The train moved very slowly and the first couple of hours it was only flat desert that we were crossing. Eventually we came to a long tunnel and emerged into the canyon. The vast canyon was amazing and there was brilliant blue water in the river. The train continued up the canyon, hugging the cliffs and passing through tunnel after tunnel. There were more than 100 in total. The scenery constantly changed from small tributary canyons with no sign of human habitation, to the bigger canyons where you could see for miles. The views were great but the train was very slow, so slow in fact that a baby was born on the train before we could make it to the nearest hospital! We got out at the small town of Divisadero. There is an amazing lookout from this town where three massive canyons meet. We were approached by a friendly local who invited us to stay in his cabanas. The cabanas were extremely comfortable and we were served dinner in his family's beautiful wood house. The next morning we set out early to go hiking in the canyon. We hiked along the rim of the canyon and were amazed at the views.
Every corner opened up entirely new vistas and we often ended up on the top of massive cliffs overlooking the canyon. We went down the sides of the canyon when we could but we didn't have time to descend to the bottom of the canyon, thousands of feet below. We ran into a number of wood huts in the canyon but never any people. The only person I saw on the hike was an older Tarahumara Indian woman walking up a steep path. The Tarahumaras still live traditionally in the canyons and she had on an extremely colorful traditional dress on. All in all, it was the most impressive hike of my life.
We returned to Divisadero to catch the last bus to the town of Creel. Creel is the base most people use to explore the Copper Canyon. We stayed at a backpacker's hostel called Margarita's that offered an incredible deal. For only 8 bucks you had a place to stay, breakfast and dinner and they were good traditional meals as well. The next day we rented mountain bikes and headed out to see the sights around Creel. There are no massive canyons near Creel but there are plenty of valleys being farmed by the Tarahumara's and lots of rocks and pine trees that made biking easy and fun. The bikes were in excellent shape with great tires and shocks and it was endless fun jumping off rocks, sliding down hills and slaloming through the pine trees. We saw the Valleys of the Mushroom, Frog and Monk and each valley had rocks shaped like it name. We finally arrived at Lake Arareko which, with the rocks and pine trees, looked exactly like a lake in Northern Ontario. We returned to Creel down the highway and were exhausted when we got back.
The next day we decided to go camping at the bottom of one of the canyons and invited another guy from the hostel to come with us. We took a bus to the Urique River and were dropped off on the bridge. We made our way down to the bottom of the canyon and made good progress at the start. Then we ran into a narrow section of the canyons and the steep walls falling directly into the deep river stopped our progress. I managed to scale the rock walls with my stuff and get to the other side but the other two got stuck and had to retrace their steps and find a way up and over the canyon. While they were gone I found a great sandy camping spot with shade from pine trees and some small cascading waterfalls on the river. When they arrived we decided to set up camp for the night there and headed off down the river leaving our packs back at the campsite. We walked for about 3 hours up the canyon with towering cliff walls and not a single person or building to be seen. The only sign of civilization were the ample quantities of cow patties along the river. We did run across one lonely group of 3 cows getting a drink from the river. It was very hot but the river was refreshing to dip in. We returned to the campsite and I set up my hammock and the other two made a fire in the sand. The next morning we hiked back to the bridge and hitchhiked back to Creel.
We caught a bus directly to the city of Chihuahua in the afternoon. As we left the canyon we entered into the Chihuahuan desert, very flat with a few rocky mountains poking up. The flat areas were brought to life with irrigation and farmland stretched on and on. Many of the farmers in the area are Mennonites who came down from the US and Canada to escape military service. Chihuahua was very hot and dry but it was a pleasant city with many parks, beautiful buildings and museums. There was a rich sense of history as the city was the site of an exile government and the base for Pancho Villa during the Revolution in the early 1900's. We left Chihuahua the next day to head to the border city, Cuidad Juarez. It has far more than a million people and is one of the biggest cities in Mexico and combined with its companion city in the US, El Paso, it makes up one of the biggest border towns in the world. We decided to walk across to the US and headed across one of the bridges over the Rio Grande. The river was bone dry because so many people need the water for drinking and irrigation. The fence along the river was intimidating and there was a bunch of graffiti under the fence noting how many people have died trying to sneak across the border and other cries for an open border. Since we were Canadian we had no trouble crossing, they didn't even check our bags and we arrived in the United States of America.
would let us and we were slightly confused. Eventually a guard escorted us out and we noticed a whole bunch of police around the zócalo. About ten more vans full of police drove up and then 5 to 10 buses pulled up and a whole bunch of protesting miners poured out. They marched up to the government building and started chanting. They handed pamphlets out which showed their demands that the government recover buried miner's bodies and end the miner strikes. After we took the metro to the huge Chapultepec Park, home to a number of interesting museums. We went to the Mexican Zoo, which was free, and saw a bunch of cool animals such as panda bears, giraffes and my first jaguar in Latin America. We returned to the zócalo just in time for another protest, this one by the Zapatistas. They were draping signs on the government building demanding that the army leave Chiapas and the police came through in full riot gear and pushed the protesters away from the building. It was a tense situation but things didn't escalate.
The next day another group of us from the hostel returned to the park with the museums and went to the huge Archeology Museum. It is full of amazing artifacts from across Mexico including from the Mayan, Aztec and many other cultures. It is impossible to see the entire thing in one day but I was still amazed by some of the tombs of kings and stones statues. After we walked up one of the main streets in the city through the business section and saw the highest building in Latin America and a number of impressive statues, including the signature Angel of Independence. We then took the subway to Tlatelolco square. This used to be the second of the Aztec's twin cities and there are a number of ancient Aztec ruins here as well as a church that dates back to the time of Cortéz. But nowadays it is more well known as the site of one of Mexico's more recent massacres. In 1968 the Mexican government was trying to put on a good face for the '68 Olympics and were cracking down on protests. At Tlatelolco square the police started firing into the crowd and many people were killed. The news was supressed by the entire media and to this day nobody really knows why the police started firing or how many were killed but most people think it was 200-400 people.
The next day I had come down with Montezuma's Revenge, or in other words, diarrhea. It was the first time I got it since my travels began but I would have preferred to avoid it altogether. I spent the day just hanging around the hostel. Luckily there was a huge rock concert being held in the zócalo so I watched that for a while. There was also a huge protest where thousands and thousands of people marched miles long through the streets around the zócalo. It appears that there is never a quiet moment in the center of Mexico. Later in the evening I felt a bit better and went to the Lucha Libra. This is Mexican wrestling made famous by the movie Nacho Libre, where all the wrestlers have colorful masks and are highly acrobatic. It was a big night for the wrestling and the stadium was packed with fans. When everyone started chanting for a wrestler, you knew they were popular and when they booed they were unpopular. The show ended with a cage being set up and 10 wrestlers locked inside until all had climbed out but one. The entire show was entertaining and obviously extremely popular in Mexico.
The next morning we left Mexico City. I could have spent many weeks there and not have gotten bored because there was so much to see and do. It was much cleaner than I expected and I can definitely see myself returning again. The next city we headed to was Guanajuato, about 4 hours northwest of Mexico City. This was an old mining town and, even though it is now the capital of the state, the town still feels that way. The buildings go right up the side of the mountains and the streets are very crooked and narrow. The town is riddled with tunnels under and through the mountains were most of the vehicular traffic passes through. These arching tunnels look like they used to be mine shafts dug out of the stone. Above the tunnels, the city is full of gorgeous colonial buildings and the houses on the mountain sides are painted every colour of the rainbow. In the morning I was exploring the city and bumped into a parade going through the streets. There was bands playing and many different types of dancers including Aztec dancers, machete dancers and people with huge paper mache masks. After the parade I went to the Don Quixote museum. The town is famous for its annual Don Quixote festival and has statues of Don Quixote, Sancho Panchez and Miguel Cervantes. The museum holds a large collection of Don Quixote themed art from around the world including art from Dali and Ocampo. I also climbed one side of the city, through the twisting streets, to a huge statue which gave a great view of the city.
We continued west, passing by a huge statue of Christ on top of a mountain marking the geographical center of Mexico, and arrived at the city of Guadalajara. With four million people it is the second biggest city in Mexico. The cathedral in the zocalo was very impressive, with an interesting mix of neo-classical and gothic architecture. The government building was also interesting with a huge, very dark and disturbing mural that recounted the history of Mexico and another mural on the ceiling of the government congress. The next day we headed north along the Pacific Coast, first passing through the blue-green fields of agave in the town of Tequila, and finally arriving in Mazatlan, a beach town. We only spent a few hours in Mazatlan but saw the endless beaches and the numerous resorts. It was extremely popular resort for Americans in the 80's but now there are mostly Mexican tourists.
After Mazatlan we took a night bus to Los Mochis and immediately got on the morning CHEPE train. This train travels through the Copper Canyon and it's the only access to some parts of the canyon. The Copper Canyon is actually a group of different canyons formed by different rivers and in many places it rivals the Grand Canyon in size. The train moved very slowly and the first couple of hours it was only flat desert that we were crossing. Eventually we came to a long tunnel and emerged into the canyon. The vast canyon was amazing and there was brilliant blue water in the river. The train continued up the canyon, hugging the cliffs and passing through tunnel after tunnel. There were more than 100 in total. The scenery constantly changed from small tributary canyons with no sign of human habitation, to the bigger canyons where you could see for miles. The views were great but the train was very slow, so slow in fact that a baby was born on the train before we could make it to the nearest hospital! We got out at the small town of Divisadero. There is an amazing lookout from this town where three massive canyons meet. We were approached by a friendly local who invited us to stay in his cabanas. The cabanas were extremely comfortable and we were served dinner in his family's beautiful wood house. The next morning we set out early to go hiking in the canyon. We hiked along the rim of the canyon and were amazed at the views. 
Every corner opened up entirely new vistas and we often ended up on the top of massive cliffs overlooking the canyon. We went down the sides of the canyon when we could but we didn't have time to descend to the bottom of the canyon, thousands of feet below. We ran into a number of wood huts in the canyon but never any people. The only person I saw on the hike was an older Tarahumara Indian woman walking up a steep path. The Tarahumaras still live traditionally in the canyons and she had on an extremely colorful traditional dress on. All in all, it was the most impressive hike of my life.
We returned to Divisadero to catch the last bus to the town of Creel. Creel is the base most people use to explore the Copper Canyon. We stayed at a backpacker's hostel called Margarita's that offered an incredible deal. For only 8 bucks you had a place to stay, breakfast and dinner and they were good traditional meals as well. The next day we rented mountain bikes and headed out to see the sights around Creel. There are no massive canyons near Creel but there are plenty of valleys being farmed by the Tarahumara's and lots of rocks and pine trees that made biking easy and fun. The bikes were in excellent shape with great tires and shocks and it was endless fun jumping off rocks, sliding down hills and slaloming through the pine trees. We saw the Valleys of the Mushroom, Frog and Monk and each valley had rocks shaped like it name. We finally arrived at Lake Arareko which, with the rocks and pine trees, looked exactly like a lake in Northern Ontario. We returned to Creel down the highway and were exhausted when we got back.
The next day we decided to go camping at the bottom of one of the canyons and invited another guy from the hostel to come with us. We took a bus to the Urique River and were dropped off on the bridge. We made our way down to the bottom of the canyon and made good progress at the start. Then we ran into a narrow section of the canyons and the steep walls falling directly into the deep river stopped our progress. I managed to scale the rock walls with my stuff and get to the other side but the other two got stuck and had to retrace their steps and find a way up and over the canyon. While they were gone I found a great sandy camping spot with shade from pine trees and some small cascading waterfalls on the river. When they arrived we decided to set up camp for the night there and headed off down the river leaving our packs back at the campsite. We walked for about 3 hours up the canyon with towering cliff walls and not a single person or building to be seen. The only sign of civilization were the ample quantities of cow patties along the river. We did run across one lonely group of 3 cows getting a drink from the river. It was very hot but the river was refreshing to dip in. We returned to the campsite and I set up my hammock and the other two made a fire in the sand. The next morning we hiked back to the bridge and hitchhiked back to Creel.
We caught a bus directly to the city of Chihuahua in the afternoon. As we left the canyon we entered into the Chihuahuan desert, very flat with a few rocky mountains poking up. The flat areas were brought to life with irrigation and farmland stretched on and on. Many of the farmers in the area are Mennonites who came down from the US and Canada to escape military service. Chihuahua was very hot and dry but it was a pleasant city with many parks, beautiful buildings and museums. There was a rich sense of history as the city was the site of an exile government and the base for Pancho Villa during the Revolution in the early 1900's. We left Chihuahua the next day to head to the border city, Cuidad Juarez. It has far more than a million people and is one of the biggest cities in Mexico and combined with its companion city in the US, El Paso, it makes up one of the biggest border towns in the world. We decided to walk across to the US and headed across one of the bridges over the Rio Grande. The river was bone dry because so many people need the water for drinking and irrigation. The fence along the river was intimidating and there was a bunch of graffiti under the fence noting how many people have died trying to sneak across the border and other cries for an open border. Since we were Canadian we had no trouble crossing, they didn't even check our bags and we arrived in the United States of America.
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