THE COPPER CANYON - A NEW TOUR FOR 2010 05/03/2009

Chihuahua’s prairies of the sky rise into the magnificent mountain country of the unspoilt Sierra Madre before plummeting ten thousand feet to the coastal lowlands of Sonora and Sinaloa and Mexico’s Sea of Cortez shore. Still hardly known outside of Mexico, the “Barrancas del Cobre” or Copper Canyon seems to make that descent in one great step, producing one of the world’s most spectacular landscapes, and certainly one of its deepest canyon systems, dwarfing the Grand Canyon! Not surprisingly there is no road that can cope with such a landscape however amazingly there is a railway. The Chihuahua-Pacific Railway is an engineering marvel. It took 100 years to complete and takes one from cacti and thorn forests along the Pacific shore up through five climatic zones to the alpine fir, oak and pine forests that clothe the higher parts of the Sierra Madre.

I took a look at the Copper Canyon area between leading tours to the Sea of Cortez and the Highlands of Mexico this year and was mightily impressed. The scenery of course was exceptional. There is plenty of local colour, the area is sparsely populated but much of that population is indigenous, and the colourful Tarahumara Indians clothed in rainbows have largely kept to their traditional way of life. So much of the region remains largely unspoilt whether it be the alpine grasslands and forests of the Sierra or the lush valleys, where trees bloomed yellow and pink amongst the many cacti. Chihuahua has prairie and deserts where we’ll see Roadrunners and Coyotes, Basaseachic great cascades amid wild country where we’ll find Eared Quetzal and Military Macaws and will have a very good chance of seeing Puma. Subtropical canyon floors are home to Starthroats, Motmots and the incomparable Black-throated Magpie-Jay as well as many butterflies. We are in the process of producing an itinerary for our first tour there which will be starting at the end of March 2010 and will be a 14 day tour concentrating on the Canyon itself, top and bottom, with a 5 day extension to nearby Basaseachic and Chihuahua. Do contact us if you would like to be put on a list to receive details of this tour in the near future.