CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO

A Short but Fun Visit

Reboarding the train in Copper Canyon's  Barrancas the conductor spoke very little English. The train was crowded, but not quite full. There was some problem with the train manifest, but we boarded the train anyway as I had the paid tickets in my pocket and figured we’d straighten it out once on board. As it turned out all went well.

The train descended through a pine forest. The steepest grade of track is from Bocoyna to Sanchez. It is a 2.5% grade. Bocoyna at 7585’ was founded in 1702 by missionaries. It means pine forest in Tarahumara. The twin tower church in town is well known. East of the train the mesas rise to 8250-8910’. We also learned San Juancito at 8000’ was established in 1906 with the coming of the railroad. We could see a large sawmill. It is a main lumber center and is one of the coldest parts of the state of Chihuahua.

We rolled by Terrero, a village of white plaster adobe buildings, that is a ranching and horse breeding area.  Slowly the pine trees gave way to cottonwoods, then juniper and oaks. The final loud speaker message informed us that Franciscan missionaries established Santa Isabela in 1668. The village of Palomas has rock quarries. The tuff-like rock is called cantera and many of the buildings in Chihuahua are made of this stone. The rest of the way to Chihuahua we rolled through a fertile agricultural valley. Mennonites from Canada cultivated the area over 60 years ago. We saw many apple and peach orchards.

When we finally reached Chihuahua at 9:30 PM we both were ready to disembark! At the hotel we heard a little more about our well-known travel agent. We were tired and hungry so we headed to the restaurant off the lobby for a late dinner. The fellow at reception was most pleasant and arranged for us to have a private tour of the city the next day.

The city was very clean and had a lot of parks and statues. We visited a gorgeous museum, Pancho Villa’s home and mausoleum, a couple of churches and rode through several lovely residential areas  returning to the hotel early evening.

We boarded a bus early the next morning for a four and half hour ride to El Paso. My travel buddy had an afternoon flight back to New Jersey and I was spending the weekend with an old friend in El Paso.

It was the end to a fun couple of weeks with all sorts of adventures, some even unexpected ones!