Throughout this area using a telephone turned out to be the most daunting experience. Without the intervention of Alberto, using my AT&T calling card would have been impossible as all of the hotel and pay phones are setup to route all toll calls to a service that requires your credit card and the first minute reputedly is a twenty dollar minute. Alberto leaned on the desk clerk (after I had repeatedly failed at the same attempt) and a phone materialized from under the desk, and with that phone you could bypass the phone pirates and reach AT&T.

The first 70km out of Creel heading toward the Copper Canyon is good paved road and ends at a fork with a dirt road heading toward Batopilas. We all stopped here and took a group photo. It was my camera and suggestion, and I joked that "this might be the last time we are all in one piece" and that this would be a good time for a photo.   Prophetic.

Subsequently the road turned to a "good dirt road", and rapidly subsequently you lose first the "good" part of that description, then the "road" classification.

The route down into the canyon becomes a very rapidly descending dirt track that is most of the time just wide enough for a single truck to pass. The road descends about 5,000 feet in six miles. It is all very tight switchbacks that are arrayed directly below where you start out. The description of the descent is "extremely technical" and that is apt. Most of the switchbacks are very heavily inclined.  There are 30-40 switchbacks to navigate before reaching the bottom of the canyon and then you follow the river along a serpentine course to Batopilas.

The advice from Alberto our guide was "either ride, or look" …don't do both, or you won't make it. About 20km into the dirt, several of us stopped to take a look down the canyon, scope out the scene and take a few photos. The switchbacks were beginning in earnest and the meaning of "extremely technical" was becoming apparent.

The group strung out pretty quickly with the experienced dirt riders on the KLR's taking the lead and ultimately arriving in Batopilas almost 2 hours ahead of the stragglers. The views going down the switchbacks were breathtaking, but the road demanded all of one's attention. It was midway down that a second dismount occurred (more gruesome details) on a switchback and the rider (yours truly) swapped his GS for a seat in the suburban and Rob rode it the rest of the way into Batopilas, after doing another repair job on the new hole in the valve cover. 

You know you've reached the end of the switchbacks and can take a moment to relax when you reach the bridge over the river.  Only 30km to go then and it is a wandering dirt road along the river bank, but not nearly as technical as the prior section.

Batopilas is an incredible little town seemingly at the end of the earth. The second town in Mexico to have electric power, it still doesn't have telephone service. The electric power is still generated by the hydro generation plant installed nearly an hundred years ago. And it remains creaky and intermittent with an average day seeing 6-12 brief to semi extended power outages. We spent two days here, kicking back, doing some local exploring and recovering from the rigors of the road down, The same road was our only exit, so back we went. The road up went faster and a bit easier, but a lot muddier as we had had rain in the night.

We picked up the trailer again in Creel, my GS went onto it, and more or less uneventfully we turned for home. The last night was at a hunting lodge near Chihuahua where only after did we learn the reason that the hunting lodge was so lavish, was that during the season it reputedly was a popular place for wealthy "hunters" from Mexico City to come away for a "guy" thing and surreptitiously bring their mistresses. It was a fine place for a final dinner and the next morning found us riding together until noon, when the group split taking divergent routes back to the border. I went out the way we came in to El Paso, left the bike in Alberto's care, and flew back to Sacramento for medical care.

In retrospect, the trip was incredible. It was my first experience in Mexico away from the border towns or the resorts along the Mexican Riviera and the Yucatan. As an emerging nation, things aren't as reliable or deluxe as other parts of the world. Sometimes the unexpected becomes the norm. Every adventure has unexpected turns, and occasional disappointments … that is just the way it is. The only real control that any of us have is our own personal actions and how we interpret the events and the days around us. Nothing was ever "perfect" but if you relaxed your expectations a notch, it was most enjoyable. Those who enjoyed themselves the most within our group were those who took the unexpected in their stride, stayed flexible and looked for the good in what happened rather than the bad.

I found the diversity of people to be fun and the group to be entertaining, to be mutually supportive, and to be good traveling companions. It took a couple of days to wear off some of the rough edges and the people wore better as we went along. I suspect that the fact that this trip was about half off road acted somewhat as a filter on the type and character of the people on the trip.