Day 63 – Basaseachi waterfall
We woke up early and had our usual breakfast of muesli before heading off. The drive to the waterfall first took us back to Creel, where we stopped for an early lunch break. As we arrived, however, we were stopped by a massive parade and we were told that today was Dia de la Revolucion (we had thought it was yesterday). So parking the car behind the parade, we continued on foot to the main square where we had street food for lunch – tamales, champurrado (hot peanut and chocolate drink), and apple empanadas.
From Creel, it was another three hour drive along terribly windy roads that were fortunately quite quiet. Eventually we arrived at the waterfall. This is the highest full-time waterfall in Mexico. We spent an hour or so walking around to the various viewpoints and then returned to the van to read our books. We had another dinner in the van setting up our camp table inside as it was very cold outside, and were fortunate to have running water at the car park – surprising given how remote it is.
Day 64 – Cuauhtemoc
Once again, we had muesli for breakfast before setting off on the road. We wanted to get an early start to Cuauhtemoc as our plan for today was to get our water pump fixed. It was a big descent down from the forest area around the canyon back down into the desert surrounding Cuauhtemoc.
We went to the first mechanic that we found – a rather grungy looking garage. We told them that we thought there was a leak and the guy got under the car, touched the pump, and showed it was wet so we should replace the pump. They quoted us 1600 pesos (600 parts, 1000 labour) and we agreed ($80). We were told to return in 6 hours. This was pretty crazy that a whole day labour is only $50 here whereas in the US we paid $60 per hour.
With our free time we first walked to the only thing in the vicinity – a large grocery store where we dined on yoghurt and banana (we’ve missed yoghurt). We then decided to go to the one attraction that Cuauhtemoc is known for, the Mennonite community.
The Mennonites came about in the 1500s when a group of people wanted more strict interpretations of Christianity. In particular they believed in adult baptism, non-violence, and not swearing of oaths to governments. They began in Germany and over the following centuries were forces to move to Russian, Prussia, later Canada and the US, and finally to Mexico. The Mennonites that we saw here were all white skinned, spoke a form of German, and looked a little bit quaint. We spent an hour in the Mennonite museum looking at the various food processing farming, and household implements.
Taking a taxi back to our car, we had to wait another hour or so before they finished. It made us rather nervous watching them as two boys clearly couldn’t figure out which way around the tubing between our air filter and engine should go. The head mechanic then dropped the end of his flashlight into our engine and put up his hands in a gesture of “whoops”. It was not recovered. At long last, the work was done just past sunset. The good news – our pump no longer leaks. The bad news – the engine light has now turned on. The mechanic told us it doesn’t really matter, but we’re worried that they put things back together wrong. Now we’re sleeping in the parking lot of a gas station in Cuauhtemoc.
