The town was small and quiet. There were a profusion of tour operators and artesanian outlets. There were Taramuharas walking the streets... women in bright skirts of yellow, red, purple... headscarfs to match. The men wore loin cloths and bright shirts with puffy sleeves. The clan is most famed for their feats in long distance running. They can cover stretches of hundred miles or more without break... cross country, barefoot or in sandals... kicking a small ball in front of them. The treacherous stretch between Batopilas and Ulrique takes two and half days to hike. In an annual Tarahumara race on the same track, the winner typically takes 6 hours to do it. The doctors, geneticists, anthropologists cannot work it out.
The gastroenterisis knocked me out for 24 hours. We wandered up and down the streets... looked in and out of Artesanian shops. Then we met Casey, the patron of a dog orphanage... he cared for nearly 40 of the beasts and ran a second hand shop to support them. The place was piled high with assorted knick knacks, ancient romantic novels, fossils, crystals, old records, coins, casino chips. When he showed me inside I was mobbed by nine vociferous hounds. We got talking a little and he offered us a place to stay. He had an empty ranch, an 'earthship' as he put it, just over the hill, past the TV antenna. No water, no electricity, but the price was nil...
We went to see Casey the next morning. We left our backpacks at the store and rented a couple of bikes. It was a fine idea, exploring the countryside, only my bicycle lacked any brakes. Coming down hills was something reckless... I'd be bouncing over the rocks... loose and jagged rubble... I'd
go crashing in and out of furrows... the tracks were hideously uneven. As we were heading home from it all I went speeding into a bank of wet mud... the chain snapped right off... I got sunk in above the ankles.
The trip itself took us into a Tarahumara Eidejo (land co operative). We had to follow the road out of town... past the cemetary... then up a little pine covered hill to a gate. We paid the fee and continued on. Rapidly the pines gave way to a surreal and awesome landscape of hills and stone. We'd pass through strange valleys of peculiar formations... the valley of the mushrooms... with great grey boulders set on white stumps. The valley of the frogs... where erosion had rendered the rocks somewhat amphibian in appearance. All around... dotting the grass... overlooking steep drops... otherworldly entities resided. Hooded figures, Cthulu beasts, crocodilian guardians. The faces were manifold... ancient and brooding... features grotesque and misshapen. Then there were the limbs... giant feet and fingers. Nature had crafted odd statues from the rocks.
In the early afternoon, we moved our stuff to the new lodgings... Casey's ranch on the hill. It was a steep and treachorous hike up there... rocky, trailless... sprouting with trees. At the top we met witha path and followed it out there. We discovered we had a canine tag along... a starved and woeful creature.. half his ear was hanging off... dangling something useless and bloody. The thing had followed us up from the town... in hope of food or comfort or both.
We arrived at the ranch with our escorts Tony and Rose. Rose showed us how to work the padlock on the gate (we didn't have a key). The site was something overgrown... the frontyard littered... oil barrels stood filled up with empty brown bottles. The ranch itself was shaped like a tank... a hill... earth had been piled against all sides to form a giant mound. Weeds sprouted out of it. We walked the periphery wondering how to get in. We found the bathroom window boarded up with planks... wrenched them off with a metal pole. I climbed inside and dropped down into the shower... opened the front door and had a sniff around.
Casey's old place was in minor decay. It comprised two rooms... a dark and unclean bathroom... a living space with bed, sofas, tables. Large slanting windows looked out from the living quarters and in a bank below them several tomato plants proliferated unchecked... literally spilling out everywhere...green vines vying for domination. A shelf ran around the room upon which were assorted dusty jars, candles, bottles. There was a cooking stove on one side, a on the other. The place was humid and odourific... dog and dust heater and mouse piss.
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We spent a day sitting around the ranch. We saw Casey in the afternoon during a grocery run and helped him build a sandwich board. He gave us some squashes. Then we hiked back up to the earthship and built a huge fire. We roasted the squashes and some potatoes and ate them with tortilla bread and refried beans. Later on we discovered a feral dog living the roof the house. We found a mouse also... it would periodically scurrying around the room. The next morning we made a trip to the well with a load of empty containers. We wanted to flush the toilet... it was festering hideously. The well was behind a barbed wire fence and we had to crawl to get at it. I climbed down inside the thing and began fishing it all out.
After we'd succeeded in working the crapper, we took a hike to the waterfall. We entered the Eidejo from a dirt track off the highway. The track led into a valley... sown with maize... a few rickety shacks here and there... Tarahumara in the fields. The valley sides were thick with pines... sometimes ending abruptly as a solid grey shelf. The trail ran parallel to a stream and it gradually widened. As we progressed, we passed through a gate and the valleys seemed to close in. A pair of young boys appeared out of the bushes and acted as guides. They took the lead... shooing away cattle. We didn't really want their service but we couldn't be rid of them. The younger of the boys... his face was painted with bizarre black patterns... he stayed behind for the last leg. The older one took us to the mirador (look out) via a steep slope, through the forest, turning here and there. We finally arrived and the view was immense... sheer with walls... some great chasm carved out. Down below, the waterfall gushed into a curved and sensuous pool. We paid the kid and he scarpered, leaving us alone to have our lunch.