Copper Canyon Day 4: Posada del Hidalgo, El Fuerte, Sinaloa

 Our hotel in El Fuerte is a glorious maze of courtyards and colonnades.

That's the pool up where the flowering tree is.

Our room is spacious with this wonderful ceiling 

and a lovely tiled bathroom with this awesome sink.

Our room is on a courtyard with a statue of El Zorro.

We had dinner in the dining room that evening.

Zorro appeared while we ate to brandish his sword and dance with the ladies. Helena appeared also in a black mask and cape to dance with the gentlemen.

The story is that Diego de la Vega was born in one of the houses that now make up the hotel.

Here is the courtyard of the old Vega house.

Diego was supposedly born in the room through the doorway to the far left.

I'm such a romantic. I love the real history behind legends. Sadly, when I looked this one up, I found no historical evidence for a real Zorro having been born here. The house probably belonged to a Vega family, but the story of Zorro is pulp fiction based on bandits resisting Americans entering California at the time of the goldrush. Sigh. I like this story much better.

The rooms around this loggia and courtyard are numbered 1, 2, 3, etc.--the original mansion built on a barracks turned into hotel.

In another section of the hotel, the courtyard is a veritable jungle.

This archway exits our courtyard

into this ramp that exits the hotel or goes up to the pool, bar, dining room, and other courtyards. I couldn't get enough of this tree.

This painting of poppies in the billiard room takes on added significance in Sinaloa Province, famous for its drug cartels.

Everything, including the rooftop pool, was beautifully lit in the evening.

The town of El Fuerte is a "Magic Town," a Mexican cultural heritage designation. We will explore more tomorrow.

Copper Canyon Day 4: Pearl Farm to El Fuerte

This morning we loaded the bus and drove around the bay to the pearl farm started by grad students at what used to be a university. The university closed down, but the pearl farm, Perlas del Mar de Cortez, is still running. Gorgeous black pearls with multicolored luster. A delightful young man named Fernando explained it to us while we enjoyed the view.

His English was excellent (as was his humor), but sometimes he spoke so fast that I had trouble understanding. I don’t wear the jewelry I have so I didn’t buy anything, but, oh, were they beautiful.  

To the right of the dock you can see the buoys where they farm the oysters that produce the black pearls.

Did I mention the beautiful views?

After that we started south to Sinoloa Province, stopping at this giant statue of a Yaqui deer dancer. The dance represents the deer offering himself for the survival of the people. A similar dance is enacted by the Mayo people.

The Yaqui people were not colonized until the early 1900s and still are among the first to rise up in protest against government actions they don't appreciate. This is a popular meeting place for such protests.

The desert scenery was not much to look at once we left the shore so Carlos put on the movie Mask of Zoro. I think we all had seen it, but we were watching for the scene shot on the beach where we saw the sunset yesterday. It was fun, and everything blew up nicely at the end. We decided we need to find it to stream when we get home since between low volume and reflections on the screen, we missed a lot.

Our hotel in El Fuete, Sinaloa, is a connection of old courtyard houses strung together, one of which claims to be the birthplace of El Zorro (the Fox). I took gobs of pictures that will require their own blog post. 

Shower is way better.

Copper Canyon Day 3: San Carlos, Mexico

We got to sleep in this morning until we woke naturally since we didn’t leave until 9. We took the bus, but the marina is really only a short walk away.  That's Cerro Tetakawi (Twin Peaks), a double volcanic core, in the background.

We had a relaxed hour-and-a-half cruise on a catamaran along the rocky cliffs of the Sea of Cortez. Fabulous houses line the channel to the sea. 

And then when we came out, there were wonderful cliffs...

and caves...

No, this is not snow and ice on this volcanic island. It's blue-footed boobie poop.

In several places the waves have worn holes through the rocks.

Lunch was on our own, but they dropped us off at a seafood place on the beach called Charley’s Rock. 

I drooled over the various shrimp dishes, crab and clams, but ended up getting the garlic octopus with rice and bread since that was something I was least likely to find on a menu at home. Sadly, I had to leave the bit of salad behind lest it mess up my digestion.

The octopus was tough as I think is typical of octopus, but very rich with butter and white wine. This appeared to be mainly sliced tentacles. I think I like calamari better. Steve got chicken fingers.

Then we had some time to walk on San Francisco beach. It was a mixture of rocks and sand and amazingly warm water. A lot of beautiful rocks. I picked up some small ones, but ended up leaving them since, what was I going to do with rocks? (San Fransisco Beach with Tetakawi on the left, our restaurant on the rock to the right.)

We came back to the hotel for a nap and to edit pictures, then at 5 went off to see the sunset from a point at the end of the road on the far side of  Tetakawi. The beach below us is where the scene in Mask of Zorro was filmed where Helena arrives back in California as a young woman.

This was much more developed than Praia Grande in Arraial, but the mixture of locals and tourists reminded me of going to watch the sunset there. 

That's Baja California across the Gulf of California between us and the setting sun.

A friend of Carlos’s was there with a camera on a drone and took a group picture which I will insert here when I get it.

We were on our own again for supper. After our delicious beach lunch, we had pizza at the outdoor bar at the hotel for supper with leftovers for Steve’s lunch tomorrow when we will again stop at a seafood restaurant. (Seafood here is cheaper than chicken. Lucky me. :-) )

While we were eating dinner, an ambulance went by and turned left, then another came by and headed straight for the marina, followed by a firetruck headed to the marina and a police car. Then the first ambulance came back, having evidently made a wrong turn, and turned toward the marina. We found out later that gasoline spilled when they were working on the engine of the boat we had ridden in the morning. When they started the engine, it exploded and seriously injured a couple people. 

Our boat. Hmm. Glad we weren't on it.

I tell myself that we are in the desert, and that's the reason the shower feels like trying to wash my hair with a squirt bottle.

 

Copper Canyon, Day 2: Phoenix to San Carlos, Mexico

 Election Day and we are fleeing the country. (We voted early.)

We got an early start. Suitcases needed to be in the lobby by 6 AM, then breakfast, a rather meager buffet—scrambled eggs, bacon, breakfast potatoes, oatmeal. No bread. No fruit. No yogurt. I was surprised by that, especially the lack of bread of any kind.

The bus left at 7. Our guide, Carlos, is giving us the thumbs up.

We sat near the back, but got good window seats. The day was spent driving through the Sonora Desert from Phoenix to Tucson to Nogales to San Carlos on the Gulf of California/Sea of Cortez. We made a rest stop mid-morning and another mid-afternoon, plus customs and immigration and lunch an hour south of that. 

Customs involved everyone getting off the bus, identifying our luggage and having it X-rayed. Immigration took longer as only 6 at a time were allowed into the building to fill out our forms and pay the tourism tax. Only one person working there. We were 38, including guide and driver. It took about an hour and a half. Could have been much longer if there had been another bus ahead of us. Carlos had prepared us for as much as three hours so by the law of expectations we were pleasantly surprised.

Lunch was at a truck stop sort of place with the choice of chicken enchiladas or  “elephant ear” (beef schnitzel and fries.) Steve and I got one of each and switched plates half way through. We both liked the elephant ear better. The enchilada had an out-of-the-can kind of flavor.

Our guide talked as we left Phoenix, passed through Tucson, entered Nogales, etc, but after lunch we had a traditional Mexican siesta. By that time the desert was starting to look a lot alike. I was sorry that we hadn’t stopped any place where I could get a picture of a saguaro cactus. (I avoid shooting from a moving bus.) They are fabulous. I didn’t realize that they live to be as much as 200 years old. They only grow an inch in 10 years. They don’t get their first “arm” until 50 years. At one point we passed a field that was full of them. Really weird to think that they hadn’t been disturbed in at least a hundred years. 

After our siesta, Carlos put on a National Geographic program on the Sonora Desert.

Caravan has the practice of rotating where you sit so no one can grab the best seats and claim them.  Today we were on the left side of the bus, so all morning we struggled with the sun. A good thing that there wasn't a lot to see in the desert. The afternoon was much better, but then people on the right side of the bus were closing their curtains against the sun so we couldn’t see. 

We loved the view from our room in San Carlos. Note the masts of the marina between us and the mountain.

Dinner was by the pool. 

We are beginning to get to know people. Tonight at dinner we sat with Jim and Carol (pre-school sub), Jamie (a dentist who splits time between MN and Savannah, GA), Amy Nelson, an Iranian Jew named Koorosh who has been in the States since 1969, and Inderjit, a Sikh from Punjab who has been in the States since the early 1970s. The last two worked together as electrical engineers before retirement.

The hotel provided a musical performance while we ate whose intonation was not up to the Minnesota Orchestra standards on our Rhone or Danube trips. [Jamie, who was sitting directly across from me, teased me the whole trip about how I cringed a couple times at the unintended dissonance.]

Copper Canyon, Day 1:Phoenix

We are starting off on another adventure. This one is a Caravan tour featuring a train trip through Copper Canyon. I confess I had never heard of it before we found this tour, but it sounds spectacular.

We did a Caravan Tour in 2019 to Guatemala and enjoyed it very much. (See our day-by-day beginning here.) The guide was excellent, the hospitality memorable and the Mayan ruins all we had hoped. We were also very pleased with how pleasant our traveling companions were. When you are cooped up together on a bus for days, you never can tell. But most on that trip were educators, curious about everything and easy to get along with. We are hoping for more of the same this time.

We are starting out in Phoenix. There are a bunch of people eating dinner in the lounge downstairs. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are our companions.

Rhone Day 9: Vieux Lyon

 Our last day we enjoyed a walking tour of Rennaisance-era Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon).

The cobblers street still sells shoes.

According to the sign in the window, this used book store specializing in alphabet books and primers was open "de temps em temps" or by appointment.

The most fun was tunnels between streets. We entered this one at what looked like an ordinary entry at #6.

On the other side of the door was a tunnel under the apartments on the upper floors.

Half way through was a window well to give light to these 16th-c apartments. The landlord would have lived in the tower.

For this let's-see-what-lies-around-the-next-corner girl, it was hard to resist climbing these stairs.

Another opening, another tower, further along the tunnel.

This tunnel past this stairway didn't go to the next street.

It led to a courtyard with an artist's shop.

Given some free time for shopping, Ingrid and I wandered toward the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist.

From there we could see across the square to the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourviere that we visited yesterday.

Ingrid had been in Lyon before. She remembered being moved by ruins of a church somewhere, but didn't remember where. We took a different route back to our meeting place. When we rounded the cathedral, there they were--ruins of the 4th-c Church of St. Stephen.

Remember those tortured martyrs from AD177 memorialized in the basilica mosaic? Their faith didn't die. It was still here in the 4th century and even in the 21st.

This was our last night on the Van Gogh. Despite all the pictures in this blog, the music has been the highlight of the trip. We travelers bonded over our evenings in the lounge, sharing musical memories of the day and enjoying "our" musicians. I would like to put together a playlist of what we heard, but most of the recordings would not be played by Jackie and Aloysia. We'll just have to plan that trip to the Orcas Island Chamber Muisc Festival.

*Jacob Gade – Jalousie (written by a Danish composer, a compatriot of Thomas Søndergård)

 

Fréderic Chopin – Waltz in A minor (newly discovered at the Morgan Library in 2024)

 

Edvard Grieg – Notturno (in honor of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Nordic Festival where Jackie will perform the MAX Concerto by Anders Hillborg in November 2026)

 

*Jake Heggie – Crossing from Orcas Island Ferry (with a discussion of Aloysia Friedmann’s Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival presenting its 29^th season, including a Grand Piano Spectacular, in August 2026)

 

Claude Debussy – Claire de lune

 

Claude Debussy – Les soirs illumines par l’ardeur du charbon (discovered in 2001, written in exchange for more coal to keep Debussy warm)

 

*Astor Piazzolla – Oblivion (Piazzolla also studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Years later Aloysia performed with him in New York City)

 

*Astor Piazzolla – Libertango (a program bookended by tangos!)

 

*Herman Hupfeld – As Time Goes By from Casablanca (“We’ll always have Paris…”)

In the morning we go our separate ways. But MPR, MSO and Earthbound Expeditions are already making plans for our next musical excursion, so some of us will reunite then. My husband emailed me part way through this trip that next time, he wants to come with me. I don't think it will be too difficult to convince Jack and Ingrid to consider joining us. As Jackie reminded us, we'll always have Paris.