El Chepe train for AndyJ3...

[PRgirl]

Well AndyJ3 I will put in El Chepe train ride description. I do it to prod you to make concrete plans to visit Latin America someday. You speak very good Spanish and have absolutely no excuse not to take the plunge someday.

Anyway, I will give it my very best description EL Chepe just for you. It is short train ride. From Chihuahua City to Los Mochis, Sinaloa (about 13 to 15 hours in duration). They call it El Chepe but it stands for Chihuahua Pacifico since the ride ends on the Pacific Ocean. It starts from the Sierra. The Chihuahuan sierra is quite pleasant. It is semi-desert but it has pines, junipers and huge lakes and cascades. It looks a lot like Lake Tahoe or Nevada at the beginning. But it is unique. It really is. The sky looks a very soft powder blue. Clouds are scattered and rare. And the rocks between the trees are gray, and charcoal black and interspersed with malachite and granite, and it reflects light in a way in which it sparkles enough to cause you to look twice at it, but instead it is a rock that makes you think that rocks can be beautiful too. And lichens grow on the rocks in lime green and dark green moss colors, giving it more dimension. The dirt has either a yellowish brown color to it, or sometimes a clay-like red
and the air is filled with a piney smell, and a hushed sort of cement mixed with fresh ground corn and gives you the same feeling of one gets from touching a perfectly round felt hat.

The towns are small with horses, and tin troughs for horses to drink from, and squawking chickens, and the women dress in either the colorful full skirts in primary colors of the Taramaura Indians with leather sandals, long black braids, and delicate beaded jewelry. They weave, don't look anyone in the eyes and work silently and efficiently on their baskets and beadwork. They are tribal and very fleet. The Taramaura are famous for their serious faces, lack of talking to anyone not Taramaura, and tremendous dedication to racing and footraces of all sorts. They are stocky, fleet and strong. With deep brown copper skin, deep black eyes and very quick step. If they move they do it with grace and with speed. The train is a study in Old Fashioned design and detail. It is extremely well kept. It is a deep forest green in color with gold accents. The entire style of a train looks like trains one only imagines in toy shops. Not in real life. But the interior is comfortable and airy. The conductor is very dignified and speaks formally in Spanish. His English and French and German is peppered with grammatical errors which he does not really care to improve on. He wears a round conductor's hat (but is not a conductor) and a matching dark green suit with a little black bow tie. There is a dining car, with a vase and little green curtains, in the vase are daisies. The entire train again feels like it belongs in another era.
Maybe the early 1930's but the perfect film version. Not the reality.

The train is slow and steady and winds through the hills and tunnels of the sierra in a steady speed. One sees many things, broken down old rusted railroad cars abandoned many decades ago. Some rusted old train wrecks, from the 19th century, overcome by the rains and rusting away. The glitter of water and if it is a drought year....the pine smell is stronger and more powerful than the smell of slightly burning wood that is so common for cooking in small rural towns near the train stops. There once was abundant deer in the hills but not anymore. Hungry people had eliminated them. What remained were elegant eagles and hawks flying slowly and gracefully over the broken red earth hills, with pieces of jagged pines and trees with budding light green leaves, looking for careless mice or rabbits thin and looking for tender greens to munch on and assuage their hunger with....what was that, just a piece of bright red in the palettes of sage green charcoal gray, powder blue sky, and red clay....and the tunnel comes to turn off your picture just when you thought the red color could be cataloged as a plant. The sound of the wheels of the trains and its swaying and sighing through the tracks as it makes its way through the hard hills...soon you see bigger divides and larger widths and swathes of canyons in which the trees are farther away and the height of the track is elevated, the canyons start multiplying in depth and number and they become this unexpected planet, of infinite canyons on top of canyons as far as the eye could see, dozens, become hundreds and you arrive at Divisadero. The train stops. Many Mexican women try to sell you delicious looking things, barbecued gorditas, bean and chile burritos to go, melon juice in rich yellow and red colors. The tomatoes are very red, the lettuce very green the onion is very onion. And the women are serious in their work and send the younger folks out to get your attention...the view looks like someone opened the veins of the world and those veins, multiplied so much that one one feels like one is looking at the stars in the sky instead of the canyons that don't look like they have an ending. Left right or front or back. All canyons, like forever. There is quiet in it. A tremendous silence to it all. Every shuffle of feet, and breath you take sounds loud and out of place in such a place. The sun is soft and weak, and yet bright. You cover your eyes with your hand to see the details of the mountains better. Your breath feels out of place. Again the Taramaura move with grace and fast. Never looking at anyone directly. The train has an emblem ChePe. A red clay circle with a foot with a sandal on the foot. It looks like something the Greek god Mercury would draw, but without the wings on the sandals. And you look at the fleet feet of the Taramaura and you realize, they wear the leather straps the same as the train emblem. And their feet move so fast when they move. It looks like they fly when they decide to move....to the left or the right. That is where the symbol on the train comes from. Interesting.

Back on the train after the wistle blows. The landscape starts to change, less dry, and more color, almost suddenly...surprisingly. In such a short time. There are large leaves in dark green now. The muted palette starts getting primary and unexpected color becomes expected color. Fuschia, and lavender purple, and deep blue and bright yellows and flame reds, and oranges....a cascade jutting out of hard canyon wall....what is that? A banana plant huge and strong....coming straight out of hard boulder rock, the humid and more pungent smell of rotting leaves and mulchy plant life replacing the dusty and less imposing smell of pine and burning wood and light clay and and dusty yellow earth and its secretive ways.

The green color variations get more complex. Large leaved plants fight with viney and smaller but equally aggressive little plants, the flowers are bigger and more abundant...the water is closer to the surface of everything. The sun starts to set, the sky is not powder blue anymore it is a darkish blue, and pinkish purple near the horizon. The breeze gets soft and humid and you expect a soft rain....not sure if it will come. You hope it does...The green train keeps swaying, back and forth in gentle motions...making you feel like you are going somewhere but not with speed just with security. The sun turns an unexpected deep orange color, the air gets slightly cloudy here, less pinpoint clarity than in the sierra...you feel the next town coming even though you can't see it. You feel its arrival before it appears....It turns into night. The insects basking in the strong light all day long, whirr and flitter around in noisy circles...the train station appears....more commercial buildings. Many old cinder block constructed buildings with faded painted political slogans from the last elections of the PRI or the PAN in primary colors....ads painted in cheap paint announcing a pharmacy or a soft drink, abandoned tires and plastics litter the ground....mixed with a tang of salt for the first time....you feel the ocean is near. You smell that distinct scent of salt water in the air. It mixes with the whirring insects. And the earthy and baking corn smell that Mexico has so in its air.

You pull into the train station, the floor is tile and cement...little black insects everywhere...along with a soft breeze and soft hushed voices....dirt parking lot, old creaking taxis, filled with glued on Virgens stuck to red plastic dashboards, and pink, garish plastic carnations...white metal old and scraped, Mexican taxi drivers ALWAYS men only busily opening and slamming doors. The dirt is gray and black with a tiny bit of yellow on top of it...the trees tropical and bright, but with none of the expected green on the ground....the air is filled with the whirring black insects....few and far between lampposts....to light the road, it is dark, and salty the air and the noises are continuous but subtle and not insistent. After all this is a city that is small and semi asleep for the night. Did the train show you many planets in such a short time...it did.

Love, PRgirl



Andy go for first class. It makes a huge difference compared to the 'clase economica'. Save money by buying food from the train station vendors (Indigenous women relying on that income to help their families), the food is perfectly safe and delicious and a lot cheaper than the expensive train food.

[ANDY-J3]

Gracias Senora,
Tienes una manera muy impressionante con las palabras. Has creado un cuadro de un pais muy primoroso y interesante. Quizas en dos anos puedo viajar a latinoamerica pero desgraciadamente en este momento no es posible (a menos que gano la loteria). Para me siempre es una cuestion de finanza o yo estaria alli este ano. Vayas con cuidado Senora y hasta luego.

[PRgirl]

Hmm, I do think I will start a travel fund. Lol. And surprise you someday. I got surprised recently and will have the ability to wire money allover the world for free. And getting you to go is a good cause. It is. Lol. Never underestimate the benefits of being able to translate for people with some 'power' it surprises me all the time. Shhh, there are many ways to reach a goal of some kind. And winning the lottery doesn't have to be one of them. Little do you know how people can scheme to get their dreams realized. It is a highly creative process. Enough.

Eres precioso Andy.