shadow and light

This is the way to start a day.  Any day.


The sun rising over Copper Canyon.  Watching the morning light play over the canyon walls was worth the price of this trip.  I could have stayed in our hotel for a week -- just to indulge in photography.  I have always wanted to be Monet at Rouen.

This was another travel day with various stops along the way.  But our first choice of travel was a change of pace.  A cable car that takes gawking tourists from the canyon rim on a 1.8 mile cable to a platform about 6600 feet lower.


The views, of course, are amazing.  Being suspended over the canyon helps tourists to realize just how magnificent this site is.  What took Nature millions of years to dig, we take in within an hour or two and are on our way.


Of course, this is what I would have preferred.

The combination of ziplines at Copper Canyon is the longest and fastest in Mexico.  Those superlatives were enough to tweak my adrenalin and quiet my better sense.  Unfortunately, we did not have time to complete a full run and make it to Creel on time.  So, there was no sense in starting.


Maybe next trip.

I did get to put some of my adrenalin to good use, though.  On each tour, the guide climbs out onto balancing rock that rests at the end of a narrow cliff shelf.  He then rocks back and forth to the applause of the tour group.


Well, I had to have a piece of that.  I wandered out onto the shelf, but I did not climb up on the balancing rock because of the wind gusts.  (I do have some sense.) 


But it was a thrill.  What you cannot see is that the three of us are standing inches away from a precipitous drop of thousands of feet.


My adrenaline having been sufficiently burned, our group climbed into two vans for a trip to Creel.


Along the way we stopped at a lake, an eighteenth century mission church (Mision San Ignacio), and two rock formations (Valley of the Mushrooms and Valley of the Frogs).  At each stopped we were greeted by Tarahumara women and children selling hand-made crafts.

Yesterday, Kathe suggested a lunch place in Creel.  I love birria.  She said there was a small restaurant one block from the train station.  Our guide recommended the same place.

And a good suggestion it was.  The name of the place is El Tungar.  Two young women serve up every imaginable dish that a working Mexican might enjoy.  Some I have never heard of.


Tonight we will rest in Creel.  Then we are off to the Mennonite Camp in the morning with an overnight stay In Chihuahua.


For some reason, I suspect my sunrise in Creel will not match the one I watched this morning. 


But isn’t that just a theme and variation on life in general?