Day in Batopilas
Thursday 4/01/2004
A crew was paving the road out front of our motel. Many of the roads in Batopilas are dirt, and this one was being paved as part of a project to remodel the central plaza. We also saw workers putting in new paver stones in the plaza and doing some welding on the gazebo. It looks to be a very nice plaza when it’s done.
Road crew. In the larger picture you can make out some of my group in the distance.
I didn’t take any pictures, but one of the things I found interesting about Batopilas was the abundance of nice vehicles. There were plenty of expensive looking trucks, new looking Ford Lobo’s and Jeep Grand Cherokes. My new 4Runner wouldn’t stand out parked on the street there. At least a few of the teenage boys were riding around beautiful fully suspended (Bob said maybe carbon fiber frame) mountain bikes – probably 5 times as expensive as mine. I don’t think the money’s from the tourism industry; we saw a few other tourists, but I’d guess the total was maybe 20 or 30 tourists in town while we were there, and the $4 meals we were having probably wouldn’t add up to many mountain bikes.
The street we parked in. When Bob and I couldn’t figure out how to pump up his tire because the pump didn’t fit the valve well enough, one of those guys sitting there politely took the pump, took our rag, wrapped the rag around the valve stem, and pumped up the tire for us! Good trick to know.
We had breakfast in a home-restaurant. Most mornings I had fresh squeezed juice, usually orange or papaya, and it was great. As fresh as it gets. Most of us had tortillas and scrambled eggs (huevos ravueltos) with chorizo, or Mexicana, or Ranchero or something.
Then we toured a hotel converted from an old Spanish family
estate. It was huge – many
rooms and a large interior courtyard with terraces and lots of planters and
even a little bell tower. Wish I
had more details to provide on the house and original owners but I didn’t
have my journal with me there. One
of the interesting things I learned was that
Batopilas
was the second city in
Inside the Hacienda’s living room. The guy on the right is Martin, our tour guide, who taking care of this Hacienda and considering buying it.
Another shot in the living room. The Hacienda’s courtyard.
Looking across the canyon at the other side. That’s a school with a basketball court, right above that steep hillside full of cacti. Rene wondered how many basketballs they go through a year!
Then we hopped onto some bench seats sitting in the back of a pickup truck to go see Sartoval, a mission made in the 1700’s. The drive out was pretty interesting because we were on basically the same type of road we had ridden in on – narrow and with steep sides. There were a couple points where I was looking over the side of the truck and looking straight down a few hundred feet because the tire was so close to the edge and the hillside was so steep. On the way back Jay and Rene sat on that side and noticed it too – they got really talkative about cornering and braking techniques and what happens when the steering blows out while driving!
In the truck bound for Sartoval. Those were some really comfortable seats. Alfonso threw in a cooler with some beer, tequila, soda and water and we were set.
A shrine on the way to Sartoval. According to Alfonso, when a young man makes his first big drug deal, he’s supposed to walk all the way from town to this shrine (5 miles?) and the last part of it on his hands and knees. It’s a rite of passage. I didn’t ask how many guys were doing this, but it’s apparently a real, current thing, not just a myth.
Sartoval church off in the distance. The church at Sartoval. At the front door, the tour guide and some local children on the right.
After the church we stopped by some caves where some Tarahumara had been living up until 2 years ago. They weren’t the type of cave that has a small entrance and goes back in a ways, they were more just an undercut in the cliff. There were still pots in there and Alfonso said that though the family had moved, they still used these caves as a guest house when someone came to visit.
Some pictures at the caves where the Tarahumara family used to live.
Next stop was the Tarahumara family’s new home. We drove up and honked and in a few minutes one of the women appeared on the hillside and we went up to see their place. We were never actually introduced or had much interaction with them, Alfonso and our guide did all the talking. Their home was a hundred yards or so up the hillside, on a little ridge. It was a little brick and wood hut, half of it enclosed and half of it just a roof. It looked decent until I figured out that there were apparently about 10 or more people sharing it. The yard had an empty chicken coop made from cactus poles, and had some blankets stored up in a tree, and goats nearby. They make pottery there, and a few of us bought pots for a few dollars each. I’ve got one on my kitchen counter now and it’s kind of a mind trip to think those Tarahumara gathered that clay and sat on that little hillside and formed and fired it.
The chicken coop. Their yard, maybe a pig sleeping in the shade. The group talking about pots.
While we were there a couple of the young girls arrived with water from the river below. The river was a long ways away at that point, maybe a mile, and it was hot, and they were carrying 5 gallon buckets of water on their heads. It didn’t look easy.
Another picture of their yard. A woman holding pots that we bought. More of the family.
Alfonso says the young girl on the right in the above picture used to play the harmonica, and is a great entertainer. I don’t remember exactly how he said it, but basically she lights up the “room” when she smiles and dances and plays the harmonica. Turned out, though, that somebody had stolen her harmonica recently. That was kind of shocking, but I guess that means there are people even less well off than these nearby.
I would have assumed from their living conditions that they might be having a rough time, but they were actually looking very well fed. They don’t have much but they must do alright gathering food and raising animals and selling pottery.
I think we all found the experience to be sobering, especially Rene. Rene is upbeat, enthusiastic, cool and also compassionate. He was a bit upset thinking about the tough lives these people must have, and then about the harmonica being stolen too. When we got back to our place he was determined to find a new harmonica for the girl, so he and Jay and I went out looking. From the stores we’d seen so far and from asking Alfonso we got psyched up for a long search with doubtful outcome, but the very first place we went right off the main plaza had a nice $10 harmonica. We didn’t get to deliver the harmonica ourselves, but we gave that and various other gifts to Alfonso and he gave them to our Sartoval guide (who he said was trustworthy) to take to the family.
Then Rene and Jay and I went off walking through the town to see more of it.
A picture Jay took of the main street in Batopilas.
From a footbridge we saw where they were getting gravel for the road concrete.
Across the river is a huge stone-walled estate, evidently Shepard’s. We didn’t have time to make it over there but apparently you can get a tour if you bang on the front door for awhile.
It was about here we passed the truck that had a dead possum (or something like that) as a hood ornament. I don’t think it was just the skin either.
More untended animals. That 3rd one that looks like it might balk? It did, never crossed while I was watching.
We saw a couple of roosters fighting, and they were still going at it an hour later when we walked back by a few hundred yards from where we first saw them. Never seen that before, but it lends a little weight to Bob’s claim about attack chickens eyeing him.
I bought some water glasses on the way at a little general store. It was fun talking Spanish with the woman clerk, I did alright – and somewhat justified the time I spent studying before the trip. I still got the gringo price, though. I paid something like 75 cents a glass, which Rene helpfully pointed out was probably twice what you’d pay in the states. To make me feel better Jay mentioned he thought those were the exact glasses they throw in for free when you buy something else at Target.
We walked back to the main bridge coming into town, which is at the other end of town from our place. It was probably a mile and a half or so. There was a rain shower or two on the way out, and then on the way back through town a seriously torrential rain shower hit. As the roads turned into rivers we ducked into a tiny jewelry shop and waited out the storm talking to Lynn, a 60 year old woman from Connecticut (or somewhere like that) who has been living in Batopilas for 15 years or so. Jay was watching the muddy water flowing through the streets and speculating whether that was dirt washing out of the town or dirt washing in from the hillside, I’m guessing both. After 20 minutes or so the power went out, and she said it was common and usually took a long time to fix. I don’t know how long it took to fix because it was still out when we left the next day.
If anything were at all visible in this picture you’d see the result of a torrential rain storm that hit that night. Really, really heavy rain turned the streets into rivers. You might also be able to see a wheelchair ramp, which given the nearby curbs and stuff is kind of funny, but in practice is probably great for mountain bikes.
We headed to a restaurant Lynn had recommended called the Swinging Bridge, but didn’t like the menu or atmosphere, and Alfonso didn’t like the place for some other reason, so we went back to the home-restaurant we had been to the night before and had another great dinner there.
Dinner in the home-restaurant. (Jay’s picture.)
For a night cap Alfonso hired a Mariachi band to play for us. They setup in the courtyard of our motel and played for a little while, and it was great. I captured a tiny bit of video to capture the music. The video shows nothing because it was very dark, but the sound came through okay. You may be able to listen to a short clip of a song I think is called “Pancho Villa” here. I wish I’d captured more, but it takes lots of memory.
The Mariachi band in the courtyard.
As they were leaving we all called out “Buenas Noches!”, except Dad who mangled it into “Buenas Nosays!”. Rene had a good time with that one, saying to me “Ryan, why are you so good at Spanish and he’s so f’d up?” which I thought was pretty funny. (Sorry Dad! ;) Well, at least is wasn’t “Buenas Nachas!”.