June 20, 2018 – June 22, 2018
Since we had survived the drive through Bogota, why not drive through the second largest city in Colombia, Medellin! We made our way through the city, then through a 4 kilometre tunnel, and wound our way slowly to the north west of the city to a small colonial town called Sante Fe de Antioquia. There we camped for a couple of nights at Los Cabanas de Pino, where there was a very nice swimming pool!
June 18, 2018 – June 20, 2018
Lago Guatape is a reservoir to the west of Medellin and is a weekend getaway for Colombians. The little town of Guatape is charming, almost every building sporting zocalos (painted decorative panels). In addition, there is the Piedre del Penol, a huge monolith that you can climb to see the views of the surrounding islands and water.
Just 45 or so kilometres from Uxmal is a small cenote on private land owned by a local family. I had read that for a small fee you could camp there and enjoy the cenote.
For those that may be unfamiliar with cenotes, here is the official definition that I found on line (thank you wikipedia):
The few restaurants that made up the town along the beach at Huatulco are bordered by a national park of the same name. We were able to camp within the gates of a newly built restaurant called El Capi’s, with access to the clean, new washroom throughout the night and slow to average WIFI, all for 150 pesos per night, about $10 Canadian. The food in the restaurant was good, there were hammocks to swing in, and shady palapas if we needed to get out of the sun.
(Nov 17 – Nov 18, 2017)
After leaving Creel, we camped for a night at Lake Arareko, visited interesting rock formations, and hiked into a nice waterfall, then made our way to the town of Batopilas in the bottom of the Copper Canyon. We had been told that the road was paved, but was steep, and scattered with rock and debris. The first part of the 65 kilometre drive seemed pretty relaxed, we saw a few rocks and thought “Hey, this isn’t so bad”.
(Nov 15 – 16, 2017)
Prior to coming to Creel we had booked an overnight tour with Eco AlterNATIVE Tours. We were not sure what to expect from the tour, we just knew that we would be visiting a village of the Raramuri people.
The lesser known Ruta de Rio Sonora is a tourist route along a road built in the 1970’s to connect colonial towns along the Rio Sonora. Most of the towns were established in the 1600’s, the earliest we saw was in the late 1500’s, and before the road was built people would travel on the river bed and banks to get from one town to the other. The area is rich in history, with old mission churches and ranch lands that have been in the works for centuries. The Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (unfortunate name…Cabeza de Vaca means cow head) followed the Rio Sonora in the 1500’s, as did the Coronado expeditions of 1540.