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 Travel & Outdoors | April 2007 
All Aboard the Mexico Express
 David Usborne - visitmexico.com
| | The best way to see Mexico's Copper Canyon is by train. David Usborne and his children get on the rails for an adventure in the Sierra Madre. (Emilio Kifuri/Canyon Travel) |
I knew that setting off for north-west Mexico with my two children in mid-July held some risk. We faced a long journey; it was the rainy season and there was the email I had received the day before. "Please be aware there are snakes and scorpions in the area and no barriers at cliff lodge."
Acting on a request from my son, Jonathan, just turned 16, for an "adventure" holiday, I had impulsively booked six days with a Texas-based company, Canyon Travel, which offers custom-made tours of the Copper Canyon region high in the Sierra Madre in the state of Chihuahua. Never mind that my daughter, Polly, 12, required nothing more of a holiday than a beach or a pool and that she would be seeing neither.
After landing in Los Mochis on the Pacific coast, we travelled inland for 90 minutes in a raging thunderstorm to the Hotel Rio Vista in the colonial town of El Fuerte, where Chal, the hotel owner, was a bit too gleeful. In years of working with Canyon Travel only 10 children had ever made the trip. Searching our room for venomous creatures, Polly gingerly requested that she be allowed to go home - her first and only wobbly moment of the week.
The focus of our trip was to be a train or, more precisely, the Chihuahua al Pacifico, or El Chepe. Opened in 1961, after 90 years of construction, and running 400 miles from the Pacific to Chihuahua City, the line climbs to elevations of 8,200ft, clings for some of the way to the sides of narrow gorges, corkscrews in mountain tunnels and skirts the Copper Canyon, actually made up of several mile-deep canyons which together are four times bigger than the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
Mexico's best-kept tourist secret, El Chepe, offers two classes of train - the economica and the primera express - with one daily departure of each class in either direction. Travellers can get on and off as they please, spending nights along the way in different towns and exploring the canyons. You can go it alone or join a tour. With kids, I opted for the latter, setting aside my phobia of group tourism.
This and all my other fears were misplaced. As you travel north-east from El Fuerte you enter country populated by Tarahumara Indians, the least Westernised of all of Mexico's indigenous peoples. At every stop we were cared for by a different host and put up in lodges owned and managed by the Indians. It was about as far away from mass tourism as you can get.
After our first day in El Fuerte with a gentle outing on the river to watch the birdlife and visit some local petroglyphs, we left for the train station. El Chepe may run on Mexican time but the primera class is reminiscent of Europe's more luxurious trains, with bar and restaurant cars and immaculate conductors. After a little negotiation with the chief porter, Emilio, we were allowed on the back balcony of the last carriage to absorb the scenery as it transformed from tropical to rugged alpine.
Five hours later, our feet barely on the platform, Mario emerged from the hubbub at Bahuichivo Station to drive us to the Parochi Inn, a small farm he runs with his two brothers. The farm is near the small town of Cerocahui with its 17th-century Jesuit church and mission.
It is our second stop, the Uno Lodge - the one without barriers - that truly takes our breath away. The drive from San Rafael station is only six miles but takes an hour of tortuous driving. The lodge, which has no electricity or telephone, sits on the rim of the Urique Canyon and the last few turns to reach it are so narrow, with the canyon falling vertically below, that one stretch must be navigated in reverse gear.
Two days at the Uno is not enough to grasp the majesty of the canyon. It is long enough, however, to take three treks with our guide and host, Noel, and to visit Tarahumara villages. Here is a place as impressive as the Grand Canyon.
Returning from our longest trek, Jonathan uttered the kind of concession no parent dares to imagine from teenage offspring on holiday. "Dad, this is the most amazing thing I have ever done," he said. I knew then that my Copper Canyon gamble had paid off.
HOW TO GET THERE: David Usborne and family were guests of Canyon Travel. Return flights to Los Mochis via Mexico City start at £815 with Trailfinders (0845 058 5858; trailfinders.com). Canyon Travel (001 830 885 2000; canyontravel.com) offers six-night trips from $1,579 (£880) per person. Child prices from $699 (£350).
FURTHER INFORMATION: Mexico Tourism (00800 1111 22666; visitmexico.com) |
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