Creel, Mexico

We got to Creel from a short three hour train ride from Bahuichivo. The train stops for 15 minutes in Divisadero, where there is this beautiful look out point into the copper canyon. There are all of these vendors selling blankets, appealing to all of the travelers who did not realize that altitude equals cold (yes, me), baskets and all sorts of random beautiful little knick knacks that you really would never need. When we arrived in creel, we understood why everyone had been refering to it as backpackers central. It was quite the tourist attraction. Creel was unbearably cold at night, and to be honest the cold was the very reason that we only stayed there two nights . Even though Kristle and I got two beds in the dorm room, we ended up huddling together on top of a twin bunk bed for extra heat because unfortunately the divisadero blankets did not do the trick. Saturday we did our first real tourist outing by seeing all of the sights in creel for about 15 minutes each on a bus tour. The bus tour was very tiring and not the way that Kristle or I like to see things. We like to spend more time at places so that we can walk around and not spend the majority of the time in a bus. However, we were able to see a lot of things in a short amount of time. We went to this beautiful waterfall and a lake called lago de arareko. My personal favorite thing that we saw that day was valle de los hongos! Which is valley of the mushrooms, they were rocks that had eroded into mushroom looking statues naturally. We were also brought to valle de las ranas y los monjas which means valley of the frogs and the monks. There was only one that really looked like a frog so they should have called it valle de la rana but whatever. There was also a rock that looked like an elephant and that was amazing, it really did. They are apparently all formed naturally, I know this because I asked the bus driver many times in disbelief because it looked more like an easter island scenario to me, but still I am pretty sure some dude got up there and carved in an eye on the elephant because that seems a little too convenient for me.
We have met so many interesting people. It would be very difficult to write about them all. We met a couple from canada, this guy gets his hip replaced in decemeber and then he goes on a cycling tour with his wife in february, they were in their 60s. It is so refreshing to see people who really live life regardless of injuries or age or circumstances. We also met a guy named Rafael, he is Russian and he walked from Utah to Mexico. He walked through the desert and barefoot because his shoe broke. Usually I would never believe such a thing but if you got to talk to this guy, you would realize that he is crazy enough to do it. He had a lot of interesting and bizarre things to say about life. Kristle has had a cold for the past two weeks and he said that she needed to focus on the energy going into her elbows. We were not convinced about his remedy but she is probably willing to try anything at this point. This, however, was very different advice than we got from these two adorable older guys. They said that the trick was to boil some ginger, add lemon, cayenne pepper, and honey to sweeten it. We met them over the communal hostel hot chocolate cake eating on my birthday. They were both anthropologists and bird watchers and we got to talk a lot about environmental reform because one of the guys was heavily involved in many environmental organizations. They ended up ripping out the mexico city portion of their lonely planet mexico book, which was like 60 pages, just for us. we only bought a book on central america to save money. Everyone has such great advice on where to go or on how to stay safe in mexico city. I just love the community of travelers and locals that are created in these places.

urique

2 hr bus ride from los angeles to san diego
20 hrs in bus from tijuana to los mochis
13 hrs in train through the copper canyon to a train stop called Bahuichivo (bah-we-chee-vo)
3 hrs down a rocky terrain ...

And we arrived in a small mountain town called urique. The three hour ride down the mountain is definitely worth noting. It was a crazy ride where we were constantly being thrown about and even when you think there is not enough room to fit the small bus that we were on down the path, there would be another truck passing you to the left. All the cars have radios and whenever they are calling a location they say the name three times really fast, it was really funny after awhile. And you should try saying urique or bahuichivo three times fast, it is quite a skill. Anyway, urique was just lovely. All of the people were so happy and so nice to us, which is a lot more than we can say for los mochis. No one understood a word of spanish that we spoke in Los Mochis and they did not seem too thrilled to try. I was in urique for my birthday on the 22nd. We stayed at a place called entre amigos. A guy named Keith owns it. He is from Oregon and he is a really cool guy. He is married to a brilliant woman from mexico named Violeta who has a PHD in something. I read one of her packets that was to help teach vocab to 2nd year spanish students in college. They have a garden with three types of lettuce including romaine, garlic, green onions, plus grapefruit and lemon trees. It was really fun utilizing those ingredients in the community kitchen. On my birthday, Kristle made me a cake with icing from hot chocolate mix. Then a beekeeper from north carolina played us happy birthday on the fiddle. We went on a couple hikes around the town. We stayed in urique for three nights and it was definitely time to leave by the time we left. I would love to go back there to hike some more or spend more time with the locals.