Quick Trip - Day 1

El Fuerte, Sinaloa, Mexico

The adventure begins...

Not the most exciting day if you must know.  Lots of riding in buses, watching the Mexican landscape slide by.

We started very early, leaving the boat at around 5:15AM.  With the short days of winter upon us, this means it was pitch dark outside.  We had looked up the local bus schedule and it indicated that they should start running by 5:30AM, so we were on the sidewalk in front of the marina at exactly 5:30AM.  We were NOT disappointed - the first bus of the day on the Sabalo Centro line was there by 5:45 and were whisked down to the Malecon in no time at all (hardly anyone around at that time of the morning and we had the bus almost to ourselves).  A short 3-block hike to the Central Bus Terminal, arriving around 6AM allowed us to catch the 6:30AM TAP bus to Los Mochis.  We were pretty proud of ourselves until we found out we were on a bit of milk-run route - we only saved about 15 minutes on our arrival time compared to the 8AM express bus.  Oh well, we got to see a lot of little towns along the way, and that is always interesting.  The TAP buses are first class and very comfortable, so we were happy.

The bus took us through a lot of agricultural land - they grow virtually everything here - there was a lot of young corn in the fields just now, and a lot of other things we had no clue what they were.  We had a 20 minute break in the city of Culiacan and managed to grab a couple of sandwiches for breakfast (around 11AM).

We arrived at the TAP terminal in Los Mochis around 1:45PM.  We had decided not to stay in Los Mochis (a city of about 250,000 people) but rather to push on to El Fuerte.  We walked about 6 blocks and found the Azules del Noroeste Bus Terminal, with service to El Fuerte, leaving almost immediately.  This was a 2nd class bus, more akin to a Greyhound service, with lots of interesting local characters.  This is ranching country and there were a lot of cowboy hats to be seen.  The bus was not too uncomfortable and it was only a 1-1/2 hour ride to El Fuerte.  We arrived at around 4PM.

El Fuerte is a picturesque little town, noted for its colonial ambiance, its Spanish architecture and mostly for being a good starting point for a trip on the Copper Canyon railway.  You can catch the train in Los Mochis but it leaves at around 6AM.  Here you catch it at 8:30AM instead, a much more civilized time of day.  We followed the advice of an old copy of the Lonely Planet guide, and stayed the night at the Rio Vista Lodge, a rustic and a bit eccentric hotel that has some great views of the river.

 

 

We are on the 2nd storey - those are tall cactus!

The town itself is very small and most everything is within a 3 block radius of the main square, so we managed to see it all in what little daylight was remaining.  We had a stunningly good meal at the Restaurant Dilligencias (breaded lobina (black bass) zarandeado-style (kind of blackened and smothered in onions)) - Susanne figures this is best thing she has tasted since we have been in Mexico, so the trip has already been worth it.

As night fell (around 6PM) the streets got real quiet and spooky.  One disconcerting thing about this place was the number of machine-gun-wielding black-clad police roaming the streets.  We know they have had drug problems in this part of the state in the last few years but it was not all that comforting to see so much fire-power in such an otherwise unassuming little place.  We decided we would be moving on in the morning.

Even though we have not gained much altitude so far, we are over 400km north of Mazatlan.  The night was definitely colder.  OK for sleeping but tough to get out of bed in the morning.  This hotel does not have any heat, and the shower has no hot water.  I think we will be looking at more upscale accommodations as we go on to the higher elevations of the canyon itself.

{GMST}26|25.4058|N|108|37.272|W|El Fuerte, Sinaloa, Mexico|El Fuerte, Sinaloa, Mexico{GEND}
{GMST}25|47.3628|N|108|59.9202|W|Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico|Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico{GEND}