Saturday May 16th, 1998
Awakened refreshed by our own internal alarms, we met our travelmates for breakfast. Breakfast here is similar to the one in the mountains: fresh fruit followed by eggs or pancakes as requested. The pico here though is much tastier and less fiery; more to my taste.
And we met our cook, a young woman (30?) who has a flair in the kitchen unlike any I have ever encountered. More later on this subject.
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Julia led us on a leisurely stroll for 4 miles to the Satevo Mission. Most of the walk was along the river and we had a wonderful time looking at the many flowers and and various trees. Collected some seeds: some from inside a hard round ball with spiky protuberances that grew from the ends of the otherwise barren limbs. Some others were seed pods I plucked from a tree of unknown variety.
Oscar met us at the mission, and after his concert, we loaded up into the Mexican limousine: two bench seats facing each other in the bed of an old battered Chevy pickup truck, and returned to the Lodge for lunch.
Ahhhhh, again, lunch! The young lady who is chef while we are here is exquisite. I could rave on and on forever and all the descriptive adjectives at my disposal would never be adequate to give a real description of how unique and exotic is the menu and its presentation. This lunch in particular stands out in memory: potatoes peeled, hollowed into the shape of a basket with handle, deep fried and filled with flavored rice. Also, a type of ratatouille with zucchini, crookneck, onions, diced and saut�ed. And the real topper was the beverage: fresh watermelon juice! Gallons of it! All you could drink! Could have been topped only by the fresh pineapple juice in Ecuador. Talk about absolutely refreshing after a hot, dusty, 8km hike and stroll around the mission.
Mike and the rest of the group accompanied Manuel Arturo in his Mexican limousine out to his favorite swimming hole, 5-6 miles north of town on the Batopilas River. Very cold water, deep enough for diving off of a large boulder in the middle of the river, and shaded from the setting sun by the west wall of the canyon. Here Mike coined a “Mikeism” that grew into a life of its own: having learned that “nadar” means “to swim” , but unable to conjugate the verb, he simply took the easy, and logical way out. He formed a new word combining elements of both languages; he came back and announced that they had been “nadaring”.
Yesterday, I had spent my afternoon luxuriating in my wonderful tub and napping on the big iron bed under a fan. Today, I went to the nadaring hole with the group and experienced first hand the invigorating chill of the river as it flows through this desert land. And am still trying to figure out how the river stays so cold in the midst of this summer heat. Just another piece of this magic place.
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I was fortunate to have accompanied them today, otherwise I would have missed the old Tarahumara Indian, known to Manuel, who we found walking along the road about 3-4 miles out of town. He accepted our offer of a ride, tucked his loin cloth modestly around his thighs and climbed into the bed of the pickup with us. His face spoke volumes of wisdom and insight gained from many years of life – 97 of them! Astonished, we requested a photo and he graciously, if hesitantly, allowed it.
Margaritas at 1830, and dinner at 1930: camarones with cream sauce and pasta. So far our suppers have been very Mediterranean and nothing has been what one commonly expects to find. All very good, but unusual. In fact, this trip has provided the most uniformly excellent food we have ever had on any extended excursion.
On this night we attended a Mexican Circus! Never let it be said that we lack a spirit of adventure! Or a certain warped sense of humor either.
Please recall that this is a town of very few satellite dishes (I saw two), a few electric plugs but no lights that I observed, 1100 souls, and a once yearly circus! I never even heard a radio that I recall. Needless to say, the populace really turns out for the circus and is fairly easily entertained. I must admit, we too were thoroughly entertained, although for entirely different reasons.
The circus troupe (and I use this term loosely, as it consisted of only a man, woman, and 3 children), set up their “stage” (also a loose term) in the dry rocky riverbed of the Batopilas River.
The “tent” consisted of a circular tarp enclosure, open to the night sky. The enclosure, about 50-60 feet in diameter had at its center a 15′ stage of what appears to be leather covering the large smooth stones of the river bed and a trapeze hung centered above it.
Two sections of bleachers faced the center with the entrance between them. The bleachers themselves were enough to give an OSHA inspector heart palpitations. Hastily erected and delicately balanced boards wriggled and rocked upon their supports. The structure remained erect based more upon hope and prayer than substance.
Each member of the troupe performed several functions, with the man assuming the lion’s share of roles: emcee, clown, electrician, ringmaster, security patrol, ticket taker, and one-man balancing act. As the lighting and sound systems were erratically dependent on a portable generator, they frequently suffered failure and his role as electrician was probably his most vital and he often interrupted his performances to race out and restore the light and music.
Mike’s favorite act was the opening one in which the lady of the troupe and her 10-13 year old daughter came out in revealing leotards and danced the hootchie cootchie. Not that Mike is lecherous, as one was approaching the size and shape of a young walrus and the other a flat chested prepubescent child. The big attraction here was Mrs. Performer’s shoes. She wore very high-heeled gold glittery shoes. This in itself was not remarkable, but one could not help but notice that the lady’s toes stopped well short of the end of the shoe, so that from the instep on the toes of the shoes pointed straight up!
The audience, entirely Mexican, was very appreciative but quite independent. The spectators continually spilled over onto the performing area and had to be shooed back. They thought nothing of going to the concession by the shortest route possible – straight across the “stage”. When the children spilled onto the performing area, they were beaten back with a long cardboard bat, much to the hilarity of the rest of the audience and other children.
My favorite act was the youngest of the troupe: a very young boy who could stand on his hands. He couldn’t do anything else, but he could stand on his hands on a variety of surfaces and he could do it very well. He stood on his hands on the “floor”, then rushed off stage only to rush back in to stand on his hands on a table, then race off, race in to do same on a chair, etc. All this in a very manic fashion at high speed, choreographed to music that inspired such frenetic activity.
It was obvious that the music had been chosen with care to encourage speed and excitement, but without much attention to details such as lyrics. And therein lies the wondrous hilarity of it all. Because, throughout and interwoven into the driving hard-rock music, was the blatant vocal proposition, in English, that we all go _____ ourselves! Of course neither the audience nor the performers spoke English, so this did not present a public relations problem for them. And we were nearly casualties of death by laughter!
Mike decided that it might be prudent of us to leave just before the end of the last act, so he suggested that we make a discrete exit to avoid the bottleneck at the only exit from the enclosure. I agreed, although I did not see how in the world our exit could be accomplished discretely, as we were seated on the top row of the bleachers, packed in shoulder to shoulder on every side. Mike thought that if we were very careful, we could slip down between the boards of the bleachers to the ground below and exit out of sight of the audience. RIGHT. He went first, squeezing through the narrow space between boards to drop to the ground. This accomplished, he stood below to grasp each succeeding pair of legs that appeared between the boards and ease the body which followed down to ground level. From there, we crept below the bleachers to the exit and made good our escape.
The next morning at breakfast, we learned that we had provided the primary source of entertainment that night. The bleachers facing us were mesmerized by the sight of white-faced gringos slowly disappearing, one by one, sucked below the surface into the dark under the bleachers. Guess we were more obvious that we thought.
Read all six parts of Copper Canyon Diary
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
