Last one of the day I promise. All caught up!
As we wound our way out of the Copper Canyon town of Batopilas, the road seemed even more treacherous this time that it did on the way down. As we were descending in to the canyon, we were on the side of the road farthest from the mountains which had relatively few rocks and boulders in the way. Today we were driving in the mountain side lane, and the extent of the landslides was much more evident than on our way down. A good portion of our lane was littered with rocks and boulders that hadn’t or couldn’t be removed, forcing us to be driving in the only lane available to us – the wrong lane! Fortunately, we are early risers and we were on the road a little before 7 am. In total we passed 7 cars in about 12 miles, and one of those was being towed and one was a large truck with it’s hood up and a helper vehicle, so only 4 were actually moving under their own power. Very fortunate for us!
After the twelve twisting turning miles, we found ourselves in an area which so closely resembled Prescott, AZ. It was at almost 8,000′ and there were dense pine forests. It was a beautiful morning for a drive. Google Maps was quite conservative on its estimate of the time it would take us to get to our next destination and we might have been driving a bit quicker than Google plans. Our five hour drive brought us to the town of Parral, Chihuahua. It has a population of just over 100,000 people.
There is a silver mine in the middle of the town that produced well for 340 years. Of course, being mining experts as of yesterday, we had to check it out and compare the two mines. It was a very different experience. We had to wear helmets! Can you imagine that!
There were actually some rules and we went inside with a small group – seven of us including the guide. We rode down two levels in a small cage-like elevator. There were originally 28 levels, but the bottom 27 were flooded when they miners hit the water level of a river. Oops!
The town was founded because of silver and then nearly abandoned completely in the 1930s after the mine failure. Now it is a town dedicated to commerce. There are an unbelievable number of shops and businesses. The dollar is at an all time high to the peso, 21.9 pesos to $1. Guess what I might be doing tomorrow. I might feel compelled to help out the Mexican economy!
And check out these birds – yellow-headed blackbirds. They definitely like it here! I have never seen so many birds on one tree.
It’s been a long day and because of my internet shortage and getting caught up on the previous two days, I’m going to excuse myself early on this post. Did I hear someone say “Hooray!!!”?
Hugs!