Author: Balaji Agoram

Millennium in the Copper Canyon (2 of 3)



Part Two: The end of the road, please
The next morning, Dec. 31 1999, we went to the mission store to look for topo maps of the Copper Canyon. After much deliberation, we decided on a trail which started from a town called Basihuare, wound up and down through some remote parts of the canyon including a couple of Tarahumara villages which are usually abandoned in the winter, back along a rim overlooking the Rio Urique, and back to a village called Humira a few miles down the road from Basihuare. It was about a 20-mile trip, which we figured to be a good 2-3 day hike.

Karl and the author
Being close to the New Year there were very few buses operating in this area, just one that day going south. The bus turned up at the expected hour and the three of us were happily off on the best backpacking trip of our lives. We got three tickets to Basihuare and asked the conductor to let us know when we arrived.

Now, neither Karl nor Rick nor I are the panicking kind. Which was a bad thing. Especially when we saw a sign proclaiming Basihuare go by. I was at the point of talking to the conductor about this event, but I didn’t have the heart to wake him up from his sleep. But when I soon saw another sign announcing Humira, I reluctantly pressed the panic button. I decided to wake up the conductor and ask him what was going on.

A small digression here. Karl and Rick are both Americans whereas I am from India, therefore I am brown-skinned. But my Spanish is as bad, if not worse, than theirs. But for some reason when I read off the language book people understand me better and when I actually speak my halting Spanish they understand me worse. In fact, they seem downright confused about my bad Spanish and make no concessions whatsoever in their conversation for my obvious (to me) incomprehension.

So, when I gently aroused the conductor and said haltingly “Basihuare?” he seemingly erupted in a tirade. He was probably just asking me why the hell I didn’t wake him up but I was too busy cursing my Univision nights to ask him if we could get off and take a bus back. Eventually, when I did manage to make myself understood, it was too late and we were a few miles beyond Humira. The driver was staring at me lazily, letting the bus go dangerously sidewards, the conductor had stopped trying to talk to me and was waiting for me to say something, the rest of the passengers were looking at me annoyed, and above all, I could feel Rick and Karl’s stares hot on my neck.

I am never any good in pressure situations like this and this time it was worse because I felt like I had let my friends down. In a brilliant show of independent thinking, I asked the conductor where the bus was going.
“Guachochi”, he replied.

“Give me three tickets to Guachochi”, I said and sealed the issue. I walked back to our seat and declared, “Boys, forget the mountains, we are going to Guachochi”.

I don’t think Karl and Rick will ever forgive me for that. Even now, we laugh about it constantly. I went to sleep to avoid questions and repeatedly dreamt of the swarthy conductor screaming “Basihuare?” at me from under his bushy moustache. When I woke up, we were in Guachochi.

Guachochi is a dirty town at the end of the road, that’s about it. As soon as we saw the town, we tried to get a bus back, but there were no buses for the next couple of days. In a burst of inspiration, I asked one of the local guys what he thought of the Y2K bug. He curtly replied “No se”. We were stuck in Guachochi for the New Millennium.

We checked into a hotel with two beds, no heat and a bathroom with the largest roof in the world – the wide desert sky. We went out for food and came back to find a strange guy hanging around in our room trying to sell us drugs. We were too distraught for drugs or even any conversation. Soon, he got bored and left our room. We walked around looking for a bar, but found only blank stares. We got back to the hotel and struck up a conversation with some kids. They told us that they were excited about the dance in the square that night. “Hey,” I thought, “maybe something is going on here after all.”

Around 7pm, it was bitter cold in our room and significantly colder in the bathroom. We walked over to the town square and had dinner in a dive. There were a few people hanging around bare-chested in the square. A man was trying out some tunes on his keyboard and what appeared to be a Mariachi band was setting up their stage. There were a couple of ladders leaning against the houses near the square and people were arranging colorful lights. I figured the town was getting ready for the new millennium.

Around 8pm, the cowboy invasion started and by 9pm a huge party was in full swing in the town square. There were 100 white hats bobbing up and down leading 100 women dressed in black. The Mariachi band was belting out tunes at a high level of distortion and the crowd showed their appreciation by dancing non-stop. The keyboard musician was soon elbowed out of his business.

At midnight, the town mayor made a short speech and even though I didn’t understand a word of it, I understood perfectly well what he was saying. The houses around the square erupted in fireworks at the end of his speech and many of the eruptions went directly into the crowd. But nobody seemed to care, so we didn’t either. One of those rockets missed us by a few feet and we almost managed to enjoy the heat.

The celebrations finished around 1am and the square was empty at 1:15. As we slowly walked back to our hotel, I was struck by the dignity of the entire evening. Even though there were hundreds of people, they all seemed to stand in their own space. There was very little loud laughing or screaming. In fact, very few people even smiled widely. Nobody drank, there was no liquor being sold anywhere. There was no overt flirting, nor furtive glances at the gringos, which we were getting used to. They came, they danced and they left, see you next year. Even though I had a camera with me all night, I did not take a single picture. It seemed somehow sacrilegious, an invasion of a private ritual.

Read all three parts of Millennium in the Copper Canyon
Part One
Part Two
Part Three