Jan 29 Day 8

today we are on our way to El Fuerte, which means “The river”, It is a cloudy day and about 50 degrees. Talc is in the air from the talc plant. We do see quite a few crops growing in this area and most are food crops, ie: tomatoes, peppers, squash and watermelons but here the primary crop seems to be corn. We just saw a man cutting dry grass in the median probably for food for his cows or horse. The houses in these small towns are mostly very small and poorly constructed. Some are pretty trashy but at others we often see a lady sweeping the dirt in front of her house. We see many many greenhouses. Some are like we see in the states but others look like tents made of netting and cover many acres. In one busy town we had to make a U-Turn and then a right turn just down the street. We just happened upon two police (Fererali) eating lunch a block or so away. The Wagon Master stopped to ask them if they would stop the traffic so we could get our big rigs through the tight turns. They did and we had traffic backed up while we were able to all make it through. Just before arriving in El Fuerte we passed by a feed lot. The cows here, even in the feed lots, are very skinny. They must have very lean beef. We are stopped for the Wagon Master to make arrangements at the campground. He has come out and said “we have big problems” and walked on. It turns out that the person who made the reservations for the campground, about a year ago, knew that there were no services but made the reservations anyway. It would not be much of a problem normally for one night but we are leaving our rigs here to take the train to Copper Canyon and will be gone for several days. He walked down to the end of the block where another rv park was, the El Fuerte RV Park, and they had just had a cancellation so they had room for us! Whew!! Don’t know what we would have done. Imagine having to reschedule the entire trip. After a quick lunch at home we took a city walking tour around downtown El Fuerte. We visited the very nice Posada del Hidalgo Hotel learned some history about it. We also visited the Catholic Church Cathedral and a very large City Hall. Many of the group stayed in town to eat. We have eaten so much that we went home and had salad. Information about El Fuerte and the Copper Canyon can be found at: http://www.mexicoscoppercanyon.com/fuerte.htm