I was excited to leave Parral today to reach the Copper Canyon.
Copper Canyon
The Copper Canyon is actually 6 canyons and is larger and deeper than the Grand Canyon! I had read a lot about it and was anxious to see it.
My original plan was to go to Creel for the night and then to Batopilas for another night and then back to Parral. However, I was very concerned about my tire and didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of no where along some dirt road. I aborted the plan and decided to just go to Creel 🙁 But even going to Creel took me through some of the canyon.
Creel
I was excited to reach Creel. It was a cool town with quite a few indigenous people walking around in their brightly coloured clothes.
I didn’t want to treat them like some sort of spectacle but I did take one picture.
On second thought, perhaps they wanted that since after taking another walk around Creel it seemed to be all about tourism. My initial excitement about Creel wore off quickly. It was set up for Copper Canyon tourism and I felt like it was sort of soulless if that makes sense.
I did tak a walk around off the tourist street but it still felt that way.
Casa Margarita’s
I had booked a hotel called Casa Margarita’s. It was difficult to find. When I did find it, there was no one there. The door was open though. I just sat in the lobby waiting for a long time. Not much security here.
Finally I was escorted to my room. It turned out to be really small. No air conditioning and no window to the outside. Just one into the lobby below.
I just didn’t feel comfortable here. Since I wasn’t going to Batopilas, I thought of spending 2 days in Creel. Not any longer. I decided I would go back to Parral the next day.
Batopilas
While in Creel I heard from a fellow adventure rider who I had met in Fairbanks, Alaska. Unfortunaly, he was now hospitalized in Mexico City with heart problems. Anyways, he had heard I was thinking about going to Batopilas. He wanted to warn me that the town was filled with drug gang members.
I had previously read about this in another blog. In that blog he said the gang members left him alone while he was there.
Perhaps another good reason not to go there with my cracked tire.
Boot Problems
The day before the zipper puller thing on my boot broke. Just googled it and it is called a pull tab. I wasn’t too far wrong! I had been using plyers to pull it up and down. When I was taking my boots off at Creel I couldn’t get the zipper to come down even with plyers. Eventually I worked it down.
I asked the hotel Manager if there was a shoe repair place in town. He said no.
I went for a walk to think about how to solve this problem. Zip ties came to mind. When I got back to the hotel I pulled out the smallest zip tie I had. Sure enough, it worked!!!
SOOOO proud of myself ha ha ha.
Well … the place was dead. I just went to bed after a really nice ride to get here.
My Route for October 22, 2016
