Message Stick

We were very sad to leave the beach and pool behind but our next destination was something that we’d been looking forward to for a long while. The Copper Canyon is a series of 20 canyons that together are wider and deeper in places than the Grand Canyon, Arizona. We boarded an 11 hour train that went on a spectacular winding trip through the heart of the landscape. The time flew past as we were kept entertained by the beautiful views and the humorous packaging of our picnic. We stopped off for a couple of nights in Creel to do our long anticipated horse trek. It seemed fitting that the trip started almost 13 months ago with a train to Mongolia and equine adventures and was now concluding in a similar fashion. This time however we hoped that neither of us would be ejected by our trusty steeds.

We arranged a meeting with a possible tour guide and when he walked in he looked like the real deal, Wranglers, Stetson, boots and that cool slightly lopsided walk you expect after being on a horse everyday. Norberto, turned out to be a great guy and invited us to join his family outing the next day to the city of Cuauhtemoc. Here we were on the hunt for Mennonites; a religious sect originally from Europe who settled here in 1920s. On the way there we stopped off for breakfast tacos at a place where their speciality filling was ‘Politico’ - a lot of tongue and a little bit of brain! While Norberto did his shopping we followed him around staring at the people that ran all the businesses. They were all fair, blue eyed and in uniforms of dungarees and conservative dresses. It was the strangest thing after seeing nothing but people with dark hair and eyes for 4 months. We got some confused looks from them, perhaps they thought we’d left the flock. We thought it a little inappropriate to photograph them but we did visit their interesting museum and ate a delicious pizza, topped with their famous cheese, in a Mennonite restaurant.

Our horse ride the next day was wonderful, just the 3 of us, spectacular scenery, happy horses and no falls. We rode through indigenous Raramuri land and it was lovely to see their women in traditional dress of full colourful skirts. Norberto made us climb to the edge of some ridiculously high and scary rocks but the view down was worth it. He also made us canter and gallop a lot and although Mark was originally sceptical he was like a natural cowboy by the end, kicking his horse on to go faster, particularly when some wild dogs started to chase us. We could hardly walk the next few days but it was worth every aching muscle and I wish we could go back and do it again.