At the very gentile time of 10 am Hugo drove us the 12 km to the train station in Bahuichivo, where we said goodbye to our good friend and boarded the Chepe for the last push. This stage of the trip will be about 4 hours to El Fuerte, and another 2 hours to Los Mochis, in Sinaloa.
The first leg of the trip was spectacular, generally following the canyon of the Río El Fuerte, which tumbles down from an elevation of 1,600 meters above sea level at Bahuichivo to about 100 m at El Fuerte. To my expert eye it has all sorts of spots for fly fishing, so one of these days I will have to come back with Dennis to write the ultimate Angler Guide to the Sierra Tarahumara. This stretch also has the best bridges of the whole trip but, alas, you cannot really see them when you are on top of them.
The Río El Fuerte feeds three different dams, which are the irrigation source for the vast ag fields of the coastal plain. Unfortunately, the one we crossed was shockingly low, so I will have to forecast that this will also be a bard, drought year for Sinaloa and Sonora.
We treated ourselves to dinner in the newly renovated dining car of the tourist class, and it was pretty good. No champagne or white-gloved waiters, as one might fancy for those traveling the same train, down the same canyons and bridges as the First Class, but pretty decent food and drink.
Suddenly the train stopped in the middle of nowhere, and 80% of the people descended leaving us puzzled. It was the train station at El Fuerte, which as far as I could tell was but a handful of hot adobe buildings. It must be something like Bahuichivo, in which the train station is some distance from the lodges, but the spectacular canyons have been replaced by low hills covered with thorny chaparral and sahuaros, so it is hard to imagine what our fellow tourists were expecting to find here. Later we were to find out that the last two hours of the trip are flat and monotonous ag fields, so maybe they thought they would save a few bucks by taking land transportation to Los Mochis.
The last stretch was monotonous, but I noticed that the fields are enormous (a sign that they are run by big ag), and many were fallow, probably as a conscious decision foreseeing a dry year.
Los Mochis is a handsome city, not unlike Turlock. Established by American ag people, they are on a strict rectangular pattern with large blocks, wide streets and avenues, a shopping mall, and some very handsome neighborhoods. It was warm but not brutally hot, although we are told that the temperature can rise to 40⁰ C on a regular basis. The big difference with respect to the Central Valley is that there are coconut palm trees everywhere, and the beach is only half an hour away at the port city of Topolobampo. Naturally, we had to have a final seafood meal together, to celebrate the conclusion of a successful trip. I had shrimp cooked in a tamarind sauce, and Raúl had an octopus grilled with a garlic sauce. Yumm!
So that was it. It is time to say goodbye to my good friend, who has to leave tomorrow morning at 6 am to catch his flight to Mexico City. We will see each other at a conference in Ciudad Juárez at the end of September, and until then we can bore everyone around us with the story of our adventures in the Sierra Tarahumara.
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