S/V Loomba-Loomba

The Copper Canyon area actually comprises more than 20 canyons covering 25,000 square miles, but there are three main canyon systems that are most visited: Urique, Copper and Terarecua. Part of the fun of the Copper Canyon is taking El Chepe (Chihuahua Pacific Railway) which runs from Los Mochis near the Sea of Cortez to Chihuahua.  It has 37 bridges and 86 tunnels along the 653km of railway line.  It runs through mostly uninhabited country, starting out near the coast, through irrigated agricultural land, dry desert with cordon cactus forests, and up to pine forests sprinkled with madrona and juniper up to an elevation of 7600 feet. The rail line was started in 1898 and competed in 1961. There are a few small towns along the railway, but most of the area is very remote with much of the access by dirt road or foot paths. Apparently this is prime marijuana and opium growing country so you don’t want to be hiking around without a guide. The most fascinating thing, ...

Since our car was in Puerto Escondido in Baja and we and Loomba-Loomba were in San Carlos on the mainland, we decided to make an adventure out of getting the car over to the mainland and do a Copper Canyon trip on the way back to Guaymas. This involved two different ferry trips, a bus, lots of driving, and a train. Ferry travel is not cheap or easy in Mexico.  We arrived at the 8PM ferry  (Guaymas – Santa Rosalia) on Saturday May 27 th at 6PM, as required.  There had been some pretty strong northerlies for a few days and the ferry isn’t very big so we asked if it was definitely going to sail. They said yes so our friend, Ray, who had given us a ride from San Carlos, left.  At 7:45 they decided the weather was too bad to go – next ferry would be Monday (maybe). We took a taxi back to the boat and decided to wait until Tuesday the 29 th . This time we had Ray ( who speaks fluent Spanish) call and make a reservation in a cabin for us for Tuesday. ...